[Goober5000]

I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief".  It should be clarified that that's not what faith is.  Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B.  Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.

I've also noticed that certain Christians seem to be making the very same mistake that n00bs make when they want everybody to make FS3: they assume that a small bit of experience makes them an expert.  N00bs who have just learned FRED will log on to HLP and try to recruit a team to make The Next Uber Campaign.  Similarly, Christians who have learned a tiny bit of theology often think that qualifies them to argue on the same level with people who have been athiests or agnostics their entire lives.

Incidentally, science is not without its "argument from authority" faults.  Astronomers look for dark matter as a solution to anomalies in their understanding of gravity, even though it's much more likely, historically, that a modified theory of gravity is needed and that dark matter no more exists than does luminiferous aether or phlogiston.  James Watson was recently forced out of his job by stating an opinion that, while supported by evidence, was politically unpopular.  Global warming is being rammed down everybody's throats as a political solution despite the fact that the supposed effects of human activity are either a) impossible to correlate with actual climate change; or b) insignificant when compared to natural events (bovine methane generation, or deforestation from Hurricane Katrina).

[MP-Ryan]

I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief".  It should be clarified that that's not what faith is.  Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B.  Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.

Thank you for clearing that up, you put it better than I ever could have.

James Watson was recently forced out of his job by stating an opinion that, while supported by evidence, was politically unpopular.

Umm, it's not supported by the evidence.  Watson's argument was based on some pseudo-biological understanding of race that dates back to the 19th century.  For a geneticist to same something like that is truly bizarre (a very few select alleles correlate to race, but they have more to do with disease than anything else).  But your other examples are reasonably legitimate.

[Edward Bradshaw]

Are you serious?  Do you really want a history of scientific failings?  I'll compile a short one (eventually, it'll take a while) if you insist but if you have any training in the sciences at all you should be able to come up with at least three big ones.

How about just 1 or 2 examples so we know what you're talking about when you say these things.

There have been meanderings in that direction in this particular thread, so I wanted it cleared up.  People are far too ready to jump to a conclusion that science is rational and produces good evidence most of the time, which isn't true.

Except I would agree with that but thats hardly the same as thinking science is 100% infallible and can provide absolute knowledge.

The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.

Religion WAS a knowledge-producing institution is the only claim I've made, and I've never said it was even close to or superior to science.  Don't put words in my mouth.... er, text.

I never said you said it was superior to science, I dont know where you got that from my post. But you did say religion is knowledge producing institution:

"This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure.....science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole...   Both have a role to play..."

And this is what Im challenging you on.

Oh come on, who says that and about what? You should be able to inundate me with examples since you say its pretty much all scientists that say that. Ive never heard this claim except by Creationists, so it baffles me that you are making some of the same arguments. I hope you arent going to claim that scientists tentatively accepting a hypothesis for the sake of research is the same thing as what you're talking about.

Every single experimenter *boggle*.  When we perform experiments, we know:
1.  We haven't identified, nevermind controlled, all relevant variables.
2.  There could be errors in our experimental design.
3.  There could be errors in our statistical significance due to (1)
4.  Better discoveries come from old discoveries, even if they weren't true.
5.  We cannot measure reality without manipulating it, and we cannot measure it perfectly (Heisenberg Pricniple)
6.  While the simplest explanation may not be the real explanation, we accept it as such (Walter's Canon)

1-4 are just reasons why an experiment might be flawed. I dont know how you think listing these possible flaws as answering the question. They taught me in school science class what might cause an experiment to yield less accurate results.

As for 5, that is true in the sence that people question them and find out they're wrong. For example geocentricity being proved wrong. Thats hardly the same thing as what you're talking about. You seem to suggest this is some kind of failing, but questioning long held ideas is essential to science.

With 6 I tried looking up Walter's Canon and couldnt find anything but if you're talking about Occams Razor it only works to a point. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one but only when it agrees with the evidence.

Creationists don't subscribe to that line of thinking.  Typically, Creationists try to poke very selective holes in the evidence with the idea to collapse the theory, but usually it's due to a lack of understanding of the theory itself and mechanisms behind it.

They do that yes, but they also either attack science in more or less the same way you have or they pretend science should and can include supernatural assumptions.

I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief".  It should be clarified that that's not what faith is.  Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B.  Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.

Religious faith is defined as complete confidence in a belief that doesnt rest on material evidence. If you're using the word as just a synonym for trust, its not a relevant definition to the discussion.

Incidentally, science is not without its "argument from authority" faults.  Astronomers look for dark matter as a solution to anomalies in their understanding of gravity, even though it's much more likely, historically, that a modified theory of gravity is needed and that dark matter no more exists than does luminiferous aether or phlogiston.

I just nod and say "okay" and "that an interesting idea" or when I talk about it I say "apparently" or "according to astronomers". I dont know anything about it but why are you saying its more likely, are you an Astronomer?

  James Watson was recently forced out of his job by stating an opinion that, while supported by evidence, was politically unpopular.  Global warming is being rammed down everybody's throats as a political solution despite the fact that the supposed effects of human activity are either a) impossible to correlate with actual climate change; or b) insignificant when compared to natural events (bovine methane generation, or deforestation from Hurricane Katrina).

As far as I can see the anti-climate change people that produced a program for channel 4 have about as much credability as the Intelligent Design movement. But thats opening a big can of worms and its already complicated discussion as it is.

[Goober5000]

Umm, it's not supported by the evidence.  Watson's argument was based on some pseudo-biological understanding of race that dates back to the 19th century.  For a geneticist to same something like that is truly bizarre (a very few select alleles correlate to race, but they have more to do with disease than anything else).  But your other examples are reasonably legitimate.

And there you go demonstrating argument from authority.  If you actually take a look at studies and tests, you'll find a correlation between average intelligence and race.  Now assuredly there are outliers on both ends of the intelligence scale in every race: both remarkably smart people and remarkably stupid people.  But on the average, the correlation holds.

And you should also consider common sense.  Considering that different human races developed in a variety environments over the course of human history, each with their own temperature, flora and fauna, and seasonal variations.  Each race was geographically and biologically isolated, and each developed its own independent responses to environmental stimuli.  Biologists have no problem admitting that different races have different susceptibilities to diseases.  Why should they have a problem with admitting that they have different levels of intelligence?

[redsniper]

because that's a huge can of worms...

[Goober5000]

So is evolution.

[karajorma]

No, I don't think you're twisting me into an attack on science but I do think you've missed a couple of the things I've said (which were mostly in reply to Ed).

I haven't missed them. I disagree with them.

Essentially, every scientist out there should be skeptical of the scientific method, and the experiments which gave us our results. Statistics try to eliminate random chance but you and I both know that probability-based measures just reduce the liklihood of randomness, they don't eliminate it.  Perhaps for the most part we all do question our methos and results, and those of others, but at the end of the day we're all accepting these as reasonable guesses (as you said).  But why do we accept those as reasonable guesses?  We really have no proof one way or the other if they are - we're basing our judgement on past history, but science itself tells us that past findings are in many cases meaningless, full of error, or completely wrong (and I don't think I need to cite you examples of this).

Agreed 100% but it's actually in that statement I think I see the nub of the problem. We're making different assumptions about what science is and what it's purpose is. If I take your assumptions as true then I'll agree with you that there is faith in science. If I take mine however I'll end up on the same side of the argument as Ed saying that there isn't.

If you take science as being the rational attempt to find the truth then yes there is a lot of faith in the scientific method involved. However that's not what I think it's for. Science is an attempt to find the best answer you can. The one that will give you the best explanation of what you see and the best method to predict what will happen next. And that it does that is not something that I take on faith.

You've pointed to many occasions where science was wrong. And I'll agree that it was wrong on those occasions but however it still gave the best answer that was possible at the time. Newton may have been later proved wrong about gravity but without science he couldn't have done better. Darwin may have been wrong about the causes of hereditary but not knowing Mendel's work he did the best he could. 

In both cases although flawed the theories created as a result were able to propel researchers following their work in directions they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Those researchers had the best answer they could have at the time. It allowed them to get results they couldn't have gotten using other methods.

To use an evolutionary example you are seem to be treating science as the caricature of evolution. A steady progression of forms getting more and more advanced as time goes on. I'm saying that science is more like the true picture of evolution, a series of forms each as best adapted to their environment as possible.

If you look at history taking that as your starting point would you not agree that since it first started science has in general given us the best answer we could have gotten given the state of knowledge and technology of the time? Is there a methodology that could have done better?

As for the scientific method itself, if tomorrow someone does invent a methodology that results in better answers than science I'd be happy to use it instead. It would be unscientific to do otherwise after all.

[MP-Ryan]

How about just 1 or 2 examples so we know what you're talking about when you say these things.

-Lamarckian theory, its precursors, and derivatives.
-Early Freudian psychology

Those are two fairly well known examples that are completely wrong - Freudian personality theory is STILL taught in University psychology classes, including the stages of development, id/ego/superego, and oedipus and electra complexes.  Lamarckian theory is still confused by a great many people as being part of evolution (hence the failure to comprehend natural selection).  Two scientific figures and their discoveries that were entirely false, yet still remain in the public consciousness.  There are many others.

Except I would agree with that but thats hardly the same as thinking science is 100% infallible and can provide absolute knowledge.

Close enough.  As I said, twice, science is an approximation of a rational method and it yields usually negative findings or bad conclusions that eventually lead to better (but still false at some level) conclusions.  The drift distance between what you agree with and what you've written as bad understanding is minimal.

The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.

"This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure.....science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole...   Both have a role to play..."

And this is what Im challenging you on.

*blink*  "Historically" has heavy emphasis in all my posts.  Religion was a useful knowledge-producing structure at one point in history, much as science is today.  And again, without early religion we never would have gotten science.

1-4 are just reasons why an experiment might be flawed. I dont know how you think listing these possible flaws as answering the question. They taught me in school science class what might cause an experiment to yield less accurate results.

As for 5, that is true in the sence that people question them and find out they're wrong. For example geocentricity being proved wrong. Thats hardly the same thing as what you're talking about. You seem to suggest this is some kind of failing, but questioning long held ideas is essential to science.

With 6 I tried looking up Walter's Canon and couldnt find anything but if you're talking about Occams Razor it only works to a point. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one but only when it agrees with the evidence.

I don't think you understood my original point.  Briefly summed up:  scientists know every result and every conclusion has some element of "wrongness" to it, but they ignore it and consider their findings a best guess.  Those 6 points are the contributing elements that lead to that conclusion.  Point 5 tells us that our results can never be correct, because measurement interferes with the natural mechanics of a phenomenon.  Walter's canon is the same thing (essentially) as Occam's Razor; we assume the simplest explanation in agreement with the evidence to be correct, yet gravity (to continue to pick on poor old Newton) is just one theory where that wasn't actually the case.

They do that yes, but they also either attack science in more or less the same way you have or they pretend science should and can include supernatural assumptions.

I've never heard a Creationist espouse my argument, mostly because it requires an in-depth knowledge of the scientific method itself.  They approximate it by trying to say there are things science can't understand, makes mistakes on, or is fooled by God, but I've never heard one point to a intellectual leap of faith (as I've constructed it) by science.  They'll say we take things on faith like peer-reviewed journals and specialists and try to equate that to Holy texts all the time, but that facile argument is not the one I'm making here.

[karajorma]

And you should also consider common sense.  Considering that different human races developed in a variety environments over the course of human history, each with their own temperature, flora and fauna, and seasonal variations.  Each race was geographically and biologically isolated, and each developed its own independent responses to environmental stimuli.  Biologists have no problem admitting that different races have different susceptibilities to diseases.  Why should they have a problem with admitting that they have different levels of intelligence?

Well there are two reasons I can think of right off the top of my head.

1) The human race is not very diverse at all. Toba (probably) nearly wiped us out. We're all genetically much closer to each other than the other animals which show huge diversity.
2) Humanity is much more intermixed that people believe. I remember a program on TV recently took 4 people who were very proud of their Britishness and gave them a DNA test to establish what percentage of their DNA actually came from the tribes that lived in Britain a millennia or two ago. Only one out of four turned out to be completely European and none of them was completely British. Many of them turned out to have a surprising large amount of DNA (30-40% in some cases) from places like the Middle East or Asia.
 With that kind of mixing going on I'd imagine it's pretty hard to claim that any race is really isolated for long enough to have any major evolutionary effects on intelligence.

Of course MP-Ryan probably knows more on the subject than I do.

[MP-Ryan]

And there you go demonstrating argument from authority.  If you actually take a look at studies and tests, you'll find a correlation between average intelligence and race.  Now assuredly there are outliers on both ends of the intelligence scale in every race: both remarkably smart people and remarkably stupid people.  But on the average, the correlation holds.

Not really.  You're probably referring to research such as that conducted in the book "The Bell Curve" and by the infamous Phillip Rushton.

There is absolutely no correlation between race and intelligence, and here's why:
1.  We don't measure intelligence.  We measure indicators we believe represent intelligence, but usually those indicators don't actually correlate to biological processes but rather environmental effects.  When we do measure biological processes, as in MZ/DZ twin studies, it's not intelligence as a whole but rather different abilities which contribute to what we call intelligence, and no study has actually tried to measure all of them.  We can expect geographic variation on cognitive traits based on historical environment and closed gene pools contributing to extremely low levels of natural selection in particular geographic areas.
2.  Most intelligence studies are carried out in a particular nation, usually the United States.  Disparate levels of education contribute more to IQ and measures of intelligence than do inherit biological ability, as does socioculturally-targeted testing.  African Americans score lower on IQ tests in the US than do whites.  Yet, if we look at the tests, we find that the types of questions usually have nothing to do with intelligence (e.g. an intimate knowledge of the rules of tennis), and they are targeted toward a middle-upper class Caucasian audience.
3.  When carried out across cultures, intelligence testing does not control for cultural variances.  We stop measuring innate abilities and start measuring acquired abilities (e.g. education).
4.  In mouse studies of the heritability of intelligence, we find that environment places a large role in developing innate ability.  In other words, gene-environment interactions negate any valid conclusions about heritability.

I should have warned you, you just stumbled into one of my personal annoyance areas in genetics that I follow closely =)

There is absolutely no scientific validity in correlations of race and intelligence.

That said - there is likely a correlation between the particular cognitive abilities that make up intelligence and race - there certainly is between the sexes.  This doesn't mean some races or sexes are smarter than others, but rather that some have cognitive strength in particular areas and weaknesses in others.  We don't see this fluidity and variability in intelligence testing because our tests measure only a few selected traits which we associate with smartness, thus leading to bad conclusions (e.g. that men are smarter than women; that asians are smarter than all other races).  It's bad science - ultimately, social variables get in the way.  Animal models actually present a much better picture of the heritability of intelligence because social structure isn't really measured.

So, next time you read something talking about correlations of intelligence and race, throw it away, it's garbage.  There are too many other factors and too many flaws in our measuring tools to even begin to tackle that question.

And you should also consider common sense.  Considering that different human races developed in a variety environments over the course of human history, each with their own temperature, flora and fauna, and seasonal variations.  Each race was geographically and biologically isolated, and each developed its own independent responses to environmental stimuli.  Biologists have no problem admitting that different races have different susceptibilities to diseases.  Why should they have a problem with admitting that they have different levels of intelligence?

I talked about this a little bit above, but I want to re-emphasize:

We have a loaded, biased definition of intelligence.

Very specific cognitive abilities probably correlate to races, but it's (at present) next to impossible to measure validly and reliably (using those terms in their scientific meaning).  Intelligence as a whole concept cannot be measured in biological terms.  Should some populations have better particular abilities than others?  Absolutely.  It means they're better at those abilities, though, not smarter.  We equate smartness with biology but smartness/intelligence is a social term, not a biological one.

Keep in mind too that it's not races that correlate with particular allelic traits, but reproduction patterns.  Those patterns USED to correlate with race, and still do to some extent, but family history is the important factor, not race.  If I had just one African American ancestor in the past 10 generations of my family, I could be a carrier for sickle cell anemia.  Similarly, an African American could easily carry a particular northern European allele that carries functional immunity to HIV and makes them a carrier.

Race is a crude tool for disease analysis that will eventually be phased out with wider use of microarray technology where individual genomes will be examined for only a few hundred dollars or less.

Have I sufficiently made my point, or do I need to start digging up some sources too? =)

[MP-Ryan]

In both cases although flawed the theories created as a result were able to propel researchers following their work in directions they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Those researchers had the best answer they could have at the time. It allowed them to get results they couldn't have gotten using other methods.

Which is something I've pointed to all along, so I agree.

To use an evolutionary example you are seem to be treating science as the caricature of evolution. A steady progression of forms getting more and more advanced as time goes on. I'm saying that science is more like the true picture of evolution, a series of forms each as best adapted to their environment as possible.

I personally subscribe to the analogy of the true picture of evolution for science as you've indicated.  What I'm saying is that many people take the first approach, seeing gradual improvement rather than acceptance that past explanations were wrong and modifying them for the current picture of historical understanding based on the accumulation of evidence.

If you look at history taking that as your starting point would you not agree that since it first started science has in general given us the best answer we could have gotten given the state of knowledge and technology of the time? Is there a methodology that could have done better?

Absolutely to the first, absolutely not to the second.

But that wasn't what I was saying.  All I'm doing is knocking some of the great believers in science down a bit and trying to demonstrate that while it is the best approach and a reasonably good one, it is also frequently wrong, and every scientist must have a little faith that in the long run the conclusions he or she reaches are going to make a valuable, not a detractory, contribution.  I use the term faith because we know from history that this isn't always the case, far from it.

EDIT:  One more thing; I have some work to clear up today so that's it for me posting today.  I'll have a look-see tomorrow evening.

[karajorma]

I personally subscribe to the analogy of the true picture of evolution for science as you've indicated.  What I'm saying is that many people take the first approach, seeing gradual improvement rather than acceptance that past explanations were wrong and modifying them for the current picture of historical understanding based on the accumulation of evidence.

Agreed.

But that wasn't what I was saying.  All I'm doing is knocking some of the great believers in science down a bit and trying to demonstrate that while it is the best approach and a reasonably good one, it is also frequently wrong, and every scientist must have a little faith that in the long run the conclusions he or she reaches are going to make a valuable, not a detractory, contribution.  I use the term faith because we know from history that this isn't always the case, far from it.

Individual scientists, yes (with reservations). Science as a whole, no. And the point I got into this debate is whether science requires faith not at the level of a researcher saying he's correct but at the level of a person saying "I choose science not religion" Your initial claim that science was an evidence-based faith is what I took issue with. It doesn't require faith. Not at that level at least. Saying that any particular scientific theory is the one you believe doesn't require faith. You might be wrong but faith is not required to say it.

As for individual researchers I'm going to say that you might have to have faith to believe you are right (when the majority of scientists have been wrong) but not that you're going to make a contribution. Right or wrong most science does make a positive contribution simply due to the fact that it increases the amount of evidence that has been gathered. That evidence might turn out to have led the researcher down the wrong path but even understanding why that happened can be valuable.

[Mika]

This is an interesting topic (here I'm referring to the last 2 pages).

As a physicist, I only consider Science a tool. Everything related to the normal life, i.e. teaching your kids to behave and helping other people has very little to do with Science, and lots more with personality, charisma and former experience in addition for eye of a situation. Intelligence tests, like discussed here, are unreliable since they have many hidden depencies. Based on my own form of intelligence analysis (which I cannot disclose here since it is based on my life experience and doesn't leave a paper trail), many a farmer I have met here could easily be, if not Researchers, at least Engineers in the Universities. So they are definetely not stupid, even though those tests might label them as one.

Also another thing I would like to add here, is that Science has always been the lap dog of the current elite. Even in Soviet Union and in nazi Germany Scientists (maths, physics and engineering, to be exact) enjoyed partially relaxed rules, since even the dictators understood too strict ideology will suffocate the creativeness, useful inventions and research. Not so with artists and writers. So a little bit of honesty here.

I don't personally like it when Science is elevated to the position where some people consider it almost like a form of Religion. Claims like "objectiveness" and such are nonsense. This is the reason I brought the examples of former paragraph into the discussion. It is pretty damn easy to appear as "objective" if you already know what will happen before the test is conducted and if the other guy doesn't know about it. Try to do that with something new, and you will find yourself thinking why the hell it didn't happen as it was supposed to go. Some scientists find new research areas there, some scientists will sweep the test under the carpet as "not fitting to the theory". This is of course related to the moral of a researcher, but I don't see Religion as prequisite for morals. Also, the pure Science as in text-book definition of Science, in my opinion, is only possible if you have job and do the research during your free time. Otherwise it is pretty much singing the notes of the people who fund your research.

Also, to dwelve in the Metaphysics, there are some interesting historical commonalities in the beliefs, like far-seeing, for example, can be found in many cultures. Has anyone considered why is this so?
Another interesting thing is that why do the signs of zodiac find such a resonance in general population? I don't simply buy the explanation that it's possible to write a general formula for the horoscope so that it will fit seemingly enough many qualities of sufficient amount of people.
Why does there exist the said number of zodiac signs for example? And how are the horoscopes of different cultures related? I've been thinking that the situation kids are born in might be drastically different in winter and summer and I don't see it too far-fetching that it could influence ones personality.
I have myself had several experiences regarding far-sensing/far-seeing depending how you define it, and as a physicist I know it is impossible to prove it. However, I know what I saw and as I checked the situation, it always turned out to have happened, or to be true.

There's something to think about,

Mika

[Edward Bradshaw]

What verifiable facts does religion give us?  I dont think you could point to any examples, but even if you did what verifiable facts does religion give us that science inherently cant?

Ever sat down and read the entirety of Genesis in the Christian religion?  It's an excellent metaphorical version of Big Bang theory as its understood today.  Verifiable fact?  Not really.  A useful interpretation of the existence of the world at the time of its writing?  Absolutely.  Religion does not yield verifiable facts as science does, which is why science has evolved as the method of choice for understanding the world - something I'm not disputing (if I were, I should be a priest, not a scientist).

  I honestly cannot believe you of all people just wrote that in all seriousness. Do you happen to think Nostradamus' prophecies were knowledge as well, just because we can twist them into fitting real world events today?

And how on earth was Genesis ever usefull? The Bible also talks about a global flood and Christian Creationist Geologists years before Darwin searched for many years for the evidence of this global catastrophe but eventually had to admit there was no evidence for it and that the earth was in fact old. It tells of animals being created fully formed and man out of dust with nothing but magic words. It talks of talking animals and food falling from the sky. It talks of the sun standing still, the earth being built on pillars and fixed to its foundation so it cannot move and that it has windows in the sky (firmament) that lets water in.  Call these parts an analogy, metaphor and parable if you want to but you cant try and tell me Genesis was refering to the Big Bang or that this story was in any way some kind of usefull interpretation of the existence of the world at the time. They made it up, because they had no idea.

Lastly, the publics ignorence regarding science is an education issue. It is a failure of the scientific community in part, in not having more spokesmen like Carl Sagan.

We trust that published discoveries are true to the extent they can be by the method until we see otherwise. 

 
Do we? Then what is peer review for and what happenes when new discoveries and papers are submitted against that research? You make out that nothing is ever challenged in science. That scientists put papers out and everyone just assumes its true until someone accidently does some experiment which assums that a previous paper is correct, and it fails because it was wrong.
 

The perpetual skepticism of science has been greatly reduced since its earliest days.  Ultimately, we tend to accept things as true until shown otherwise, rather than accepting things as false until given
convincing data in support of them as the scientific method tells us to.

If you are referring to the public I would probably agree.
 

There is a degree of trust and certainty in every scientific discovery and experiment, which equates to faith as you yourself stated.

Tentative belief is not faith. Faith is complete adherence to a belief where evidence is irrelevant. Its the very reason why you have the phrases "he lost faith" or that someone is "having a crisis of faith" because faith is complete trust and complete confidence in belief. Once you stop having complete confidence, once you start to doubt your beliefs you no longer have faith which is the reason why we have those phrases. If you are just using faith as another word for trust then its not the same kind of faith and irrelevant.
 

I never said the Bible wasn't flawed; it's a greatly flawed document, great story but not even an approximation of history.  metaphorically we can see how its meaning fits modern theory, but there are large chunks of the Bible that were cut to essentially fit the political nature of the period.  Do not interpret my saying that science requires faith at some level to mean that I believe religious texts are a better way of understanding the world.

I know you never said that. The reason I bought it up was that arguing against the scientific community isnt an argument against science itself.
 

So what are the flaws of the scientific method, and how can we make it better? If religion coulld really verifiably increase our knowledge in ways science cant, then the scientific method must be lacking in something.

The scientific method is incapable for accounting for all the variables in a problem; as such, we need either a way to include all the variables.

If science claimed to be able to produce absolute truth then it would have to account for all the variables, but it doesnt. So again Im asking you what can be improved in the scientific method to gather more accurate knowledge?
 

Like it or not, science was born of religion.

"In" religion maybe, not "of" it. Religion is and always was inherently against self correction. They can and have changed their minds about a relatively small amount of irrelevant parts but their core beliefs will stay the same. When the Council of Nicea convened in 325CE they voted by committee about the relationship of Jesus to God. They didnt debate if God existed or how much evidence they had for him.
 

Without religion in the earliest days of our history, we would not have science today.  There was nothing fundamentally wrong with religion (it was a knowledge-producing institution) until power entered into it.

You really think they questioned all their beliefs with all the skepticism of the scientific method, throwing out beliefs that were not based on any evidence?
 

Religion led mankind to question and to wonder, and to seek answers before science ever existed.  Today, that role is entirely different, but it was necessary to where we sit in contemporary society.

Religion did that, as did philosophy. But religion, becuase its based on faith not evidence wont change its mind based on evidence, lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. Because if they did they wouldnt have had faith anymore.
 

Just because science is the sole institution producing verifiable fact today doesn't mean that it requires no faith; one does not negate the other.  You have faith in the evidence, even though science tells us the evidence is only an approximation of reality.  I won't dispute that evidence-based knowledge is the sole primarily useful form of knowledge, but we have erroneous or a lack of evidence in a great many things, yet you fundamentally accept those things as true.

Do I? Do you understand what a tentative belief is?
 

We have no evidence that supports existence on a higher plane of existence (call it what you will) at present but that does not necessarily mean it will always be so.  Similarly, at one time we had no evidence that the atom was divisible, yet subsequent discoveries made that possible.

True. Maybe we'll discover evidence Thor is real or that we really are in a form of The Matrix, but why is disbelieving those for lack of any reason to believe in them, faith?

I don't pretend to know one way or the other about a great many things, including higher planes of existence, but I don't pretend that I can dismiss the possibility outright, just as I don't dismiss the possibility tthat our understanding of gravity is flawed.  We just don't know.  I work based on the evidence we have at present, and skepticism prevents me from accepting possibilities that seem patently ridiculous at present, but this does not mean I have absolute conviction that the evidence to date is completely true.

Confusingly you wrote exactly what I have been saying all this time, I thought. But Im glad we agree here and I probably couldnt have said it better myself.
 

I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the fallibility of the scientific method and the scientific community that uses it to demonstrate that complete trust in scientific evidence amounts to faith.

Complete trust is faith, thats right.
 

Nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  Probability does not at all equate to near-certainty.  We can only support theories, not prove them or near-prove them, something a lot of believers in science tend to overlook.

I know beyond reasonble doubt isnt "near proving" something, I only put it that way because thats what they say in law. What I meant was that the theory has been shown to be so well supported that it would be irrational and unreasonable to say you dont believe in it, eg. Evolution. Obviously I dont mean a theory is ever "proven" absolutely, in fact thats what Ive been saying all along. That there is no absolute knowledge to be found.
 

Well Im not, so Im not sure why you assumed all this about me in order to ask the question.

Your responses to date have shown a reluctance to accept the fluidity of scientific discovery.  You seem to believe the evidence is usually right, whereas I believe the evidence is usually wrong and its only a matter of time until it is improved upon.

Why is everything so black and white? Darwin was wrong about many things as was Newton, but that doesnt mean they werent right as well.

Yes I know and if I drop an apple there is a chance it could fly up into the air instead of fall to the ground. We could all really be in the Matrix or just be apart of some Zen dream but that isnt likely and science isnt going to pay much attention to such philosophical post-humanistic masturbation without a good reason. Lots of things are possible but far less things are probable. Gods could be real, Im certianly not denying that, but I also dont think its at all probable enough to believe in. So, I dont believe in Gods, since I see no reason to believe in one.

Ah, but science does pay attention to the improbabilities - that's how new influential discoveries are usually made.  Not to mention, improbabilities have a real nasty way of screwing up experiments.  Error/improbability/uncontrolled variables are the most important part of science.

You're just being pedanatic now. The point was science has no reason to consider the highly improbable like The Matrix or Gods and it doesnt take faith to disbelieve them if you have no reason to believe them.

-Lamarckian theory, its precursors, and derivatives.
-Early Freudian psychology

Those are two fairly well known examples that are completely wrong - Freudian personality theory is STILL taught in University psychology classes, including the stages of development, id/ego/superego, and oedipus and electra complexes.  Lamarckian theory is still confused by a great many people as being part of evolution (hence the failure to comprehend natural selection).  Two scientific figures and their discoveries that were entirely false, yet still remain in the public consciousness.  There are many others.

Thankyou for that now I know what you are refering to. I dont know enough about Psychology or what they teach in the classes to comment on Freud. However regarding Lamarckian evolution, this was proven wrong by scientists that questioned it.   Darwins errors have been corrected, Newtons errors have been corrected and Lamarckism was show to be wrong. This doesnt seem to help your postion that scientists dont question each other and just go around accepting each others theories on faith.

Except I would agree with that but thats hardly the same as thinking science is 100% infallible and can provide absolute knowledge.

Close enough.

Well, no, actually its not close at all. The only part I could see that I would take issue with is the part that said science produces good evidence "most of the time". I would say that science corrects its mistakes pretty well, most of the time.

As I said, twice, science is an approximation of a rational method and it yields usually negative findings or bad conclusions that eventually lead to better (but still false at some level) conclusions.  The drift distance between what you agree with and what you've written as bad understanding is minimal.

We were able to improve our understanding of the universe by questioning geocentricity. We were able to improve our understanding of evolution by questioning Darwins original ideas. We were able to improve our understanding when we questioned Steady State theory. We were able to improve our understanding of light with Newtons research and when we questioned Newtons theory of Gravity we also improved out understanding. I agree our knowledge now is still partly wrong even with the best theories, it always will be as we can never know everything with absolute certianty and theres always more to learn. But why do you put it the way you do? Its the best we can do and you still havent told me why tentatively accepting something is faith? Science is the very antithesis of faith.

The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.

"This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure.....science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole...   Both have a role to play..."

And this is what Im challenging you on.

*blink*  "Historically" has heavy emphasis in all my posts.  Religion was a useful knowledge-producing structure at one point in history, much as science is today.  And again, without early religion we never would have gotten science.

1. You only started talking using the past tence after a few posts, as you can see you did use the present tence several times. But if thats not what you meant it did come accross that way.

But okay lets forget that, if you mean historically I take issue with that as well. When was religion ever a knowledge producing structure? Science being used by religions doesnt count, thats still science. Im talking about a verifiable increase in knowledge by religion that science inherently couldnt accomplish. I mean if you're going to say they are two seperate ways we can gain knowledge, you should be able to show me how we can gain knowledge from religion, right?

2. Without early religion you wouldnt have got science? Maybe. The Greeks might be said to be the ones that originated the modern scientific method. But later, the church wouldnt have helped a lot of science. But I know they did do it. Geology was performed by Christian Creationists. And Darwin called himself a Naturalist who wanted to be a Priest, Naturalist not being another word for atheist back then, but ironically was what someone that wanted to study gods creation called hismelf. Historically dogmatic faith has only hindered science, for example, there must have been a world wide flood or that evolution couldnt be true. The father of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus centuries before Darwin stated something he would never know the true significance of, he pleaded with the very Creationist "scientific" community at the time to listen to him.

"I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape.  I myself most assuredly know of none"   - Carl Linnaeus, 1788

I don't think you understood my original point.  Briefly summed up:  scientists know every result and every conclusion has some element of "wrongness" to it, but they ignore it and consider their findings a best guess. 

Well from what you've been saying this "element of wrongness" is understading that no matter what we do science can never be 100% accurate and 100% certian about anything. Well yes, but so what? I dont consider ignoring this post-humanist nonsence as some kind of failing unless there is an actual failure with the experiment that can objectively be shown to have had a real and observable impact on the conclusions drawn.

Those 6 points are the contributing elements that lead to that conclusion.  Point 5 tells us that our results can never be correct, because measurement interferes with the natural mechanics of a phenomenon. 

What you said was that we cannot measure anything perfectly. In other words, we cannot know something with absolute certianty. Big deal, lets be practical and just try and get the most accurate understanding of the universe that we can and move forward trying to correct our mistakes and keep learning and gathering more facts rather than crying because we cant really know anything for sure, I mean gosh, we might not even exist. 

Walter's canon is the same thing (essentially) as Occam's Razor; we assume the simplest explanation in agreement with the evidence to be correct, yet gravity (to continue to pick on poor old Newton) is just one theory where that wasn't actually the case.

So Newtons theory did not agree with the evidence? Sure he was wrong in several ways, but he wasnt totally wrong and you can still use his theory and get accurate results so long as you dont apply it to every situation.

I've never heard a Creationist espouse my argument, mostly because it requires an in-depth knowledge of the scientific method itself.

I post on an anti-evolution message board and have argued with Creationists for going on 8 years now. Ive heard probably all the arguments Creationists have ever made and believe me they do certainly argue what you have been. You see, their idea is that Creationism is better than science because the Bible doesnt change, its absolute. Science they argue keeps changing. Look how many times they've had to correct themselves! They say. That science doesnt know anything with absolute certianty but they do, they KNOW god exists and they KNOW the Bible is true and they KNOW evolution is wrong and they KNOW God created.

They approximate it by trying to say there are things science can't understand, makes mistakes on, or is fooled by God, but I've never heard one point to a intellectual leap of faith (as I've constructed it) by science.  They'll say we take things on faith like peer-reviewed journals and specialists and try to equate that to Holy texts all the time, but that facile argument is not the one I'm making here.

Well it pretty much is, but they also do literally make the argument that you have to have faith in science (to accept things like evolution. ) That science is based on faith, that science teaches you how not why. Etc etc. I mean you even said that Genesis sounds like the Big Bang Theory and that this was some kind of point that it was therefore a good and usefull form of knowledge back then.  Aside from that they do usually take it a lot further than you do, but still Ive heard the same arguments more or less come from them as some of the ones I have heard from you, rather bizzarly.

Ed

[MP-Ryan]

I'm tired of writing about gangs and moral panics for the moment, so I decided to take a "break" and return to this unholy (pun intended) mess =)

I honestly cannot believe you of all people just wrote that in all seriousness. Do you happen to think Nostradamus' prophecies were knowledge as well, just because we can twist them into fitting real world events today?
And how on earth was Genesis ever usefull? The Bible also talks about a global flood and Christian Creationist Geologists years before Darwin searched for many years for the evidence of this global catastrophe but eventually had to admit there was no evidence for it and that the earth was in fact old. It tells of animals being created fully formed and man out of dust with nothing but magic words. It talks of talking animals and food falling from the sky. It talks of the sun standing still, the earth being built on pillars and fixed to its foundation so it cannot move and that it has windows in the sky (firmament) that lets water in.  Call these parts an analogy, metaphor and parable if you want to but you cant try and tell me Genesis was refering to the Big Bang or that this story was in any way some kind of usefull interpretation of the existence of the world at the time. They made it up, because they had no idea.

Contextual frame of reference.  This was how the world was understood at the time of writing.  That doesn't mean its invaluable or not useful.  This understanding of functional laws of the universe guided civilization for many, many years.  I wouldn't call that irrelevant knowledge.  You see to be dismissing every form of understanding that didn't come out of modern science as useless, but you're forgetting that without these early forms of knowledge we wouldn't have a science to work with.  I'll come back to this a little later, but in the meantime, recall that genesis is one of the LATER creation mythologies.

Do we? Then what is peer review for and what happenes when new discoveries and papers are submitted against that research? You make out that nothing is ever challenged in science. That scientists put papers out and everyone just assumes its true until someone accidently does some experiment which assums that a previous paper is correct, and it fails because it was wrong.

Peer-review weeds out the quacks and bad interpretations; it doesn't eliminate error, bias, or even fraud.  Very LITTLE in "good" science is ever challenged, especially by peer-review.

Tentative belief is not faith. Faith is complete adherence to a belief where evidence is irrelevant. Its the very reason why you have the phrases "he lost  faith" or that someone is "having a crisis of faith" because faith is complete trust and complete confidence in belief. Once you stop having complete confidence, once you start to doubt your beliefs you no longer have faith which is the reason why we have those phrases. If you are just using faith as another word for trust then its not the same kind of faith and irrelevant.

You and I have complete trust that the scientific method is valid, reliable, produces good results in the long term over many experiments, and yields as good a guess that is possible.  We both KNOW that this may not at all be the case and very likely isn't, but we believe it anyway because we have no evidence to the contrary.  I call that faith, not tentative belief.

If science claimed to be able to produce absolute truth then it would have to account for all the variables, but it doesnt. So again Im asking you what can be improved in the scientific method to gather more accurate knowledg?

The ultimate objective of science is to produce knowledge as close to absolute truth as possible.

"In" religion maybe, not "of" it. Religion is and always was inherently against self correction. They can and have changed their minds about a relatively small amount of irrelevant parts but their core beliefs will stay the same. When the Council of Nicea convened in 325CE they voted by committee about the relationship of Jesus to the God. They didnt debate if God existed or how much evidence they had for him.

Ah, someone's been paying too much attention to contemporary religions.  Early Christianity and Islam were not at all against self-correction, they were aginst outside correction.  But they're poor examples.  If we go back even farther, we can talk about the Sumerians, Egyptians, Minoans, Mycenaeans, the Greeks.  All of these civilizations had religions that were self-correcting.  Ditto for the Romans, though to a lesser extent.  None of these religions acted contrary to the know facts of their historical period.  That's what makes Christinaity and Islam somewhat unique historical cases.

You really think they questioned all their beliefs with all the skepticism of the scientific method, throwing out beliefs that were not based on any evidence?

Religious beliefs, up until the Enlightenment, were never in contradiction with observable fact at their period in time.  If they ended up in conflict, belief was adjusted as necesary (the Greeks before and after the Persian invasions are an excellent example of this; it inverted their religion).

Religion did that, as did philosophy. But religion, becuase its based on faith not evidence wont change its mind based on evidence, lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. Because if they did they wouldnt have had faith anymore.

Ah, but they used to.  Not now, not with modern religions so much, but that's a different story altogether.

Do I? Do you understand what a tentative belief is?

You hedging your argumentative bets to evade the question of faith as I've thus far defined it in relation to science?

Why is everything so black and white? Darwin was wrong about many things as was Newton, but that doesnt mean they werent right as well.

Hey, you're the one who set a black and white tone to set things off here (useful versus useless knowledge, dichotomy of science OR religion).  I'm fully aware that discoveries advance through time - that;s rather been my point all the way through here.

Thankyou for that now I know what you are refering to. I dont know enough about Psychology or what they teach in the classes to comment on Freud. However regarding Lamarckian evolution, this was proven wrong by scientists that questioned it.   Darwins errors have been corrected, Newtons errors have been corrected and Lamarckism was show to be wrong. This doesnt seem to help your postion that scientists dont question each other and just go around accepting each others theories on faith.

Which totally evades my original point - that much of science is patently false to begin with and is only changed over time to reflect understanding at later points in time.  But that knowledge is never actually true, it just better reflects the evidence.  Lamarckian theory and Freudian theory are two spectacular examples of how erroneous scientific conclusions have pervaded throughout time, as much of science does.  Both were accepted for so long because we believed in the methods that produced them, yet the results were patently false.

But why do you put it the way you do? Its the best we can do and you still havent told me why tentatively accepting something is faith? Science is the very antithesis of faith.

The scientific method is the antithesis of faith - our belief in the validity and reliability of the scientific method requires a leap of faith because we have no evidence that it is valid or reliable most of the time, but rather the opposite.  Science only becomes valid and reliable with immense periods of time.  Now, if you want to say you're tentatively accepting science because its the best guess you can try to get away with that, but the vast majority of people never question the basis of science or its conclusions, and thus rely on faith in the method to determine that its conclusions are correct.  Like I said, all you're doing by bringing up tentative belief/acceptance is trying to circumvent the concept of faith by saying "but no, I'm really skeptical of science all the time" but we both know that's not the case.

But okay lets forget that, if you mean historically I take issue with that as well. When was religion ever a knowledge producing structure? Science being used by religions doesnt count, thats still science. Im talking about a verifiable increase in knowledge by religion that science inherently couldnt accomplish. I mean if you're going to say they are two seperate ways we can gain knowledge, you should be able to show me how we can gain knowledge from religion, right?

Referring back to early Christianity as well as the half-dozen other religions I've mentioned, in their earliest forms these were structures that led to useful knowledge about the world.  Why does the sun rise and set?  Because a god pushes it across the sky in a regular fashion at the same time each day.  Throughout history, religion provided knowledge about the daily lives of the people living them.  Just because science has essentially replaced that function today does not mean for one second that these were valueless contributions then.  Religion served as a rudimentary science, and a useful one at that, for millenia.

I dont consider ignoring this post-humanist nonsence as some kind of failing unless there is an actual failure with the experiment that can objectively be shown to have had a real and observable impact on the conclusions drawn.

Faith.  First off, nothing is objective.  Doesn't exist.  Second, why does an effect have to be observable to be important?  You assume they aren't, but that unobservable effect could be destroying your conclusions.

Big deal, lets be practical and just try and get the most accurate understanding of the universe that we can and move forward trying to correct our mistakes and keep learning and gathering more facts rather than crying because we cant really know anything for sure, I mean gosh, we might not even exist.

Never said we shouldn't.  I'm just saying we need to acknowledge a certain element of irrationality in our ultimate method and recognize that we are making a leap of faith, to some extent, in every accepted conclusion.  We are putting universal trust in the method at that particular moment.

So Einstein produced no evidence for his theory?

That wasn't my point, you're drifting away again.  I was pointing out that Newton's simpler explanation of gravity was assumed to be correct by the scientific method, yet it was only upon the introduction of Einstein's work that we found it was actually more complex.  Einstein's work fit with his evidence, as did Newton's, yet the evidence available immediately prior to Einstein's work still pointed to the simpler of the two conclusions (even then, a rudimentary understanding of the evidence Einstein used could still lead to Newton's conclusions as the simpler of the two explanations).  But let's cease drifting; Walter's Canon is yet another part we accept in the regular conduct of science that isn't actually true, but we accept it as such anyway.

Aside from that they do usually take it a lot further than you do, but still Ive heard the same arguments come from them as I have from you, rather bizzarly.

Then you're not reading this carefully enough.

Creationism's goal is to undermine science as a fluctuating naive method lacking in understanding.

My purpose is this now-ridiculously-long subthread is to demonstrate that every scientist, at some level, requires an element of acceptance in the scientific method which is not entirely rational nor based on the evidence at hand, yet is accepted completely in order to further the regular conduct of science.  That is where faith enters into science.  It doesn't negate the discoveries, it doesn't mean science is irrational, it simply means that science is not as objective as some people would like to claim.  That doesn't make religion a superior or even equivalent form of understanding today either.  However, religion has historically played a role in the birth of modern science and is essence its other, irrational, half.  Religion can exist without science, yet science could not exist without religion.  Absence of religion implies an absence of faith and a willingness to accept some things as true or possibly true even though we fully and rationally know that might not be the case.  In that absence, modern science of today's period could not exist, and in point of fact would never have developed in the first place.

Now, if you would like to ignore the historical convolutions of the subject and simply go with the assumption that science is uses an element tentative belief instead of using the word faith, that is certainly your perogative, but it doesn't for a second make that jump, however termed, anymore rational, logical, objective, or based on evidence.

In other words, science has not yet entirely escaped the clutches of philosophy, its integral function, or religion, its parent.  It is still a fledgling discipline with old components of human thought and feeling drifting around its perimeter.

EDIT:  And let me just say, if anyone else is actually still following this exercise in history/philosophy/semantics, I applaud them, because even I'm just about done on the subject =)

[Edward Bradshaw]

Contextual frame of reference.  This was how the world was understood at the time of writing.  That doesn't mean its invaluable or not useful.  This understanding of functional laws of the universe guided civilization for many, many years.  I wouldn't call that irrelevant knowledge.  You see to be dismissing every form of understanding that didn't come out of modern science as useless, but you're forgetting that without these early forms of knowledge we wouldn't have a science to work with.  I'll come back to this a little later, but in the meantime, recall that genesis is one of the LATER creation mythologies.

No, Im sorry. I asked you to show me where religion has ever given us facts. This apparently was your best example, a made up myth by an ancient people that incidently borrowed and changed an earlier myth. Making things up when you dont know something can never be a fact, Ryan! It can never be knowlege! This is what Im talking about when I say some things you say make you sound like a Creationist.

Peer-review weeds out the quacks and bad interpretations; it doesn't eliminate error, bias, or even fraud.  Very LITTLE in "good" science is ever challenged, especially by peer-review.

Since you are so black and white, I assume "eliminate" to you means " eliminate 100%" because peer review is done with the precise goal of eliminatting error, bias, and fraud. Does it succeed all the time? Of course not but no one ever suggested it ever did.

But to keep implying it never does and scientists dont question each other is just ridiculous. It happenes all the time. Dr Ken Miller humerously joked in his lecture on Intelligent Design (you can find on google) that "paleontologists will fight about anything!", even whether to call some fossil a mammal-like reptile or a reptile-like mammal. If what you were saying was really true we wouldnt ever uncover fraud, we wouldnt correct errors and some well long accepted theories wouldnt just never be challenged but never accepted by the scientific community. Its like you accept that this has happened but act like it was just some kind of accident or something.

You and I have complete trust that the scientific method is valid, reliable, produces good results in the long term over many experiments, and yields as good a guess that is possible.  We both KNOW that this may not at all be the case and very likely isn't, but we believe it anyway because we have no evidence to the contrary.  I call that faith, not tentative belief.

You can speak for yourself. I only trust the scientific method because I cant see any better way of gaining more accurate knowledge. Complete trust would mean Im not open to any problems with it or a way to improve it, but I am.

If science claimed to be able to produce absolute truth then it would have to account for all the variables, but it doesnt. So again Im asking you what can be improved in the scientific method to gather more accurate knowledg?

The ultimate objective of science is to produce knowledge as close to absolute truth as possible.

To put it a better way sciences goal is to know as much possible about the universe and be as accurate as possible. "As possible", from the perspective of not being perfect. So its only the lofty desire that we should aim for, though we know deep down we can never attain absolute knowledge.

Ah, someone's been paying too much attention to contemporary religions.  Early Christianity and Islam were not at all against self-correction, they were aginst outside correction. 

The council of Nicea was very early Christianity, there was so much disagreement of peoples beliefs it was ordered that they get together and argue it out. Like I told you before, they werent debating the specifics of their religion but rather the details they didnt mind changing. Those that didnt want to change to the offical view were branded as unorthodox.

But they're poor examples.  If we go back even farther, we can talk about the Sumerians, Egyptians, Minoans, Mycenaeans, the Greeks.  All of these civilizations had religions that were self-correcting.  Ditto for the Romans, though to a lesser extent.  None of these religions acted contrary to the know facts of their historical period.  That's what makes Christinaity and Islam somewhat unique historical cases.

Not sure why you evidently have such a loose definition of self correction. And the Sumerians are a strange example to cite as thats where the Biblical religion originated unless you mean the fact that their creation story changed as some kind of evidence for them changing their beliefs.

Religious beliefs, up until the Enlightenment, were never in contradiction with observable fact at their period in time.  If they ended up in conflict, belief was adjusted as necesary (the Greeks before and after the Persian invasions are an excellent example of this; it inverted their religion).

Of course they were in contradiction. Do you really want me to point to all the crazy myths and legends in the Bible that dont fit with observable facts and never did?

Why is everything so black and white? Darwin was wrong about many things as was Newton, but that doesnt mean they werent right as well.

Hey, you're the one who set a black and white tone to set things off here (useful versus useless knowledge, dichotomy of science OR religion).  I'm fully aware that discoveries advance through time - that;s rather been my point all the way through here.

I never said anything about "usefull" knowledge or "useless" knowledge. I said religion was useless as any kind of knowledge provider.

I challenged you to show me how it can or has ever provided us with knowledge, how it has ever provided us with facts. All you did was say there were scientists that followed the scientific method in religion and that Genesis provided facts about how the universe began. Its been a pretty weak argument so far regarding that.

Which totally evades my original point - that much of science is patently false to begin with and is only changed over time to reflect understanding at later points in time.  But that knowledge is never actually true, it just better reflects the evidence.  Lamarckian theory and Freudian theory are two spectacular examples of how erroneous scientific conclusions have pervaded throughout time, as much of science does.  Both were accepted for so long because we believed in the methods that produced them, yet the results were patently false.

Your original point was that pretty much all scientists say "even though we know this data isn't actually true, we're going to accept it as our best guess because its all we have, and past guesses have led to improvement in understanding even if they were false)". Ive never heard anyone say anything remotely like what you even put in quote marks!

But Lamarckian theory was still show to be wrong by scientists. Sure it took a while, but it also took a while to uncover Piltdown man but that fraud only made it harder to commit a similar fraud in the future. Unless you were talking about the way the public believes everything (which Im not entirely sure they do but) its is irrelevant anyway.

The scientific method is the antithesis of faith - our belief in the validity and reliability of the scientific method requires a leap of faith because we have no evidence that it is valid or reliable most of the time, but rather the opposite.  Science only becomes valid and reliable with immense periods of time.

 

Oh so theres your problem. That it takes time for error to be found out. Not really such a great revelation. Yes, sometimes it even takes a lot of time, but thats a failure of people as far as I can see, not the method. Repeated applications of the method ensures that errors, bias and fraud are usually quite good at being corrected or found out.

Now, if you want to say you're tentatively accepting science because its the best guess you can try to get away with that, but the vast majority of people never question the basis of science or its conclusions, and thus rely on faith in the method to determine that its conclusions are correct. 

People, at least where I live, question science all the time. But we were talking about science, not the Scientific Community (though that is more relevant), but certianly not the public.
 

Like I said, all you're doing by bringing up tentative belief/acceptance is trying to circumvent the concept of faith by saying "but no, I'm really skeptical of science all the time" but we both know that's not the case.

Again, you can speak for yourself.

Referring back to early Christianity as well as the half-dozen other religions I've mentioned, in their earliest forms these were structures that led to useful knowledge about the world.  Why does the sun rise and set?  Because a god pushes it across the sky in a regular fashion at the same time each day.

That wasnt usefull knowledge! That wasnt even knowledge! They saw the sun rise and set. Good. That was easy. Thats an observable fact. They explained that by sayng their god pushes it round the sky. Oh dear, and they were doing so well. They made it up because they didnt know. This wasnt knowledge, even then. The only knowledge was the fact of the observations. But thats the start of science, not religion. Yet you say their made up cop out was some kind of usefull fact. If they were rational they would have stopped and said "we dont know why that happens", but they didnt, they just pretended they did.

Throughout history, religion provided knowledge about the daily lives of the people living them.

Religous people usually claim to "know" many things, but they dont really "know" them at all they only believe them. And please dont object to the word "know" in some post-humanist excitment like you did the word "objective" later on.

I dont consider ignoring this post-humanist nonsence as some kind of failing unless there is an actual failure with the experiment that can objectively be shown to have had a real and observable impact on the conclusions drawn.

Faith.  First off, nothing is objective.  Doesn't exist.  Second, why does an effect have to be observable to be important?  You assume they aren't, but that unobservable effect could be destroying your conclusions.

   Nothing is objective, yes yes. And we might not really exist. This might all be one big dream and we may all vanish in a puff of imagination. Maybe the universe was created last Thursday complete with memories and false history. Right, so you dont like the word objective? Ok, how about "rational", how about "reasonable", how about the word "practical"?  If Im conducting an experiment and I ask you if you can find something wrong with it and you say, well you havent taken into account every single possible variable Im going to say.... uh huh... I know that, thats impossibe. So can you see any actual effects or variables that I havent accounted for that could be making it less accurate? Becuase if the only thing anyone can come up with is "well its not absolutely perfect in the post-humanist sence" Im probably going to be pretty happy with it.

Big deal, lets be practical and just try and get the most accurate understanding of the universe that we can and move forward trying to correct our mistakes and keep learning and gathering more facts rather than crying because we cant really know anything for sure, I mean gosh, we might not even exist.

Never said we shouldn't.

Ah but we might not! And so you're having faith that we acually exist! You're having faith we're not in The Matrix! You have faith Thor isnt real! You have Faith faeries arent real!

I'm just saying we need to acknowledge a certain element of irrationality in our ultimate method and recognize that we are making a leap of faith, to some extent, in every accepted conclusion.  We are putting universal trust in the method at that particular moment.

The idea that in order to disbelieve anything requires faith even if we have literally no reason at all to believe in it, makes the word faith rather meaningless. But I will accept this definition of faith, so long as you accept its not the same in any way to religious faith, but I know you wont do that because then you cant compare the two.

That wasn't my point, you're drifting away again.  I was pointing out that Newton's simpler explanation of gravity was assumed to be correct by the scientific method, yet it was only upon the introduction of Einstein's work that we found it was actually more complex.  Einstein's work fit with his evidence, as did Newton's, yet the evidence available immediately prior to Einstein's work still pointed to the simpler of the two conclusions (even then, a rudimentary understanding of the evidence Einstein used could still lead to Newton's conclusions as the simpler of the two explanations).  But let's cease drifting; Walter's Canon is yet another part we accept in the regular conduct of science that isn't actually true, but we accept it as such anyway.

You said Newtons theory wasnt the simplest theory that accounted for all the evidence. Sure, he turned out to be wrong though not completely and Einsteins General Relativity will no doubt probably be at least a bit wrong as well, but the more we question these things we collect more facts and are closer toward a more accurare understanding.

Then you're not reading this carefully enough.

Creationism's goal is to undermine science as a fluctuating naive method lacking in understanding.

I know you arent a Creationist, I know its not your goal. Im simply pointing out a similarity to some of their arguments.

[MP-Ryan]

I've just read your whole reply, and there are a lot of things I could clear up, fix, reiterate because they've been missed, or dispute (early Christianity and the Sumerians in particular, but I'm not going there now).  But I also realized three things:
1.  We've drifted so far from the original point that its not even recognizable in roughly 90% of the discussion.
2.  You've somehow missed the two singularly important paragraphs in my whole post.
3.  We're not actually talking about the same things, whether by my miscommunication or yours, and no amount of furthering this pedantic exercise in intellectual futility is going to get the derailed train back on track.

So I'll conclude my part in this tangental mess with this:  it is important for everyone to recognize the historical roots of science, philosophy, and religion, and to recognize that the most derived forms (e.g. science) could not today exist without their earliest precursors (e.g. religious institutions).  It is also important to recognize that the scientific method is only an apprxoimation of rationality and as such, all its conclusions suffer from reliability and validity errors.  Getting past those errors to further your belief in the fundamental reasonability of science requires either transitory belief (as Ed would put it), or Faith (as I tend to put it, mostly because I like stirring the pot and making those atheist types do a little self-reflection and consider agnosticism ).

But yeah, I'm not dissecting another enormous post into minute detail for the sake of furthering what has now become a pointless discussion.  So... good arguing with you, but we'll have to agree to disagree.

[Ace]

I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief".  It should be clarified that that's not what faith is.  Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B.  Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.

This definition of 'faith' then does not apply to religion. Past experience in this context is based on knowledge, observation. The supported deductions and inferences from that. Since religion can not be objectively known, by definition, it is a 'way of knowing' not subject to this form of experience and thus not this definition of 'faith.'

My purpose is this now-ridiculously-long subthread is to demonstrate that every scientist, at some level, requires an element of acceptance in the scientific method which is not entirely rational nor based on the evidence at hand, yet is accepted completely in order to further the regular conduct of science.  That is where faith enters into science.  It doesn't negate the discoveries, it doesn't mean science is irrational, it simply means that science is not as objective as some people would like to claim.

Science merely attempts to prove the most probable. Philosophically one does not accept a hypothesis, one merely fails to reject. Because of this, one technically avoids leaps of logic and 'faith' in inferences. The only true assumption made is that there is an observable universe, and that data (observation) has meaning which reflects that universe. However this assumption is made by everyone to a degree in order to function in their daily lives. (otherwise it's a solpsistic, and rather nihilistic universe)

As for objectivity, there are plenty of cases of incredible biases and politically-driven research. Something that immediately comes to mind are the objections raised by an archaeologist who is just getting her tenure at Columbia University who has objected to entire archaeological sites in Israel being bulldozed because the researchers' political agenda overlooks evidence of occupation of 'non-Israelite' groups due to the political inconvenience. This is an extreme example, personal biases form the very foundation of research questions. But if one is aware of this fact, attempts to be more objective can be made. Objectivity is an ideal to be strived for, not an absolute.

[karajorma]

Science merely attempts to prove the most probable. Philosophically one does not accept a hypothesis, one merely fails to reject. Because of this, one technically avoids leaps of logic and 'faith' in inferences. The only true assumption made is that there is an observable universe, and that data (observation) has meaning which reflects that universe. However this assumption is made by everyone to a degree in order to function in their daily lives. (otherwise it's a solpsistic, and rather nihilistic universe)

Well you've summed up in one paragraph what I've been trying to say for two pages now.

[Ghostavo]

So I'll conclude my part in this tangental mess with this:  it is important for everyone to recognize the historical roots of science, philosophy, and religion, and to recognize that the most derived forms (e.g. science) could not today exist without their earliest precursors (e.g. religious institutions).

Could you expand on that point? I've searched for the origin of philosophy and can't find a thing about religion.