The Opening of the Scientific Mind

[ant]

The irony is that scientific progress has, in a sense, led to more chaos rather than less. Further, it has created questions which will never be answerable within the existence of human beings. Where these questions arise, the secular scientist's position is that science will eventually provide the answer. That approach is the other side of the, 'God of the gaps,' canard which the secular scientists invoke against creationists.

scientific progress involves nearly always a faustian bargain. the many advances science has brought has also introduced some or most horrific events as a result.
and man, of course, can corrupt anything he gets his hands on.

it's highly disingenuous to point the dirty finger at other institutions while turning away from the horrors caused by a morally relativistic secular community that uses science as its handmaiden to justify its actions (eugenics, racial superiority, etc).


Science as an answer to everything under the sun is scientism.
To say, "science is an ethical and moral framework" is an admittance to scientism. It's an extreme position that is both bigoted and dangerous in the long run. It is an exclusionary attitude that seeks to weed out those who do no adhere to it's tenets.
It is THIS WAY, therefore, you OUGHT to do it this way.

[LanDroid]

Walking on water had nothing to do with turning gravity off. To advocate that it did demonstrates a lack of understanding, or at least appreciation of the discussion of metaphysics and devolves to detriment of said advocate.

1. Mr. Tulip stated God stopped gravity "when He made the sun stop in the sky so the Jews could smite the heathen." Nothing to do with walking on water.
2. How do you know what supernatural mechanisms were used to walk on water?

stahrwe said (Science) has created questions which will never be answerable within the existence of human beings. Where these questions arise, the secular scientist's position is that science will eventually provide the answer.

This is not necessarily true. For example, I don't think it is possible to learn much about the vast expanses that lie outside of our observable universe. Yes, there may be other questions that appear to be unanswerable now, but ultimately yield to further investigation.

[LanDroid]

Ant said And I don't think we are too far off in agreement. Science defined broadly as a systematic search for truth, then yes, I'd agree that psychology, psychiatry, linguistics, math, anthropology, etc are part of a family that refers to itself as science.

As for a strict scientific methodology involving testing, replicability, and prediction, psychology, sociology, anthropology, fall very short of said methodology. For these areas of "science" are subject to unobservable truths, and lack both testability, and replicability. The humanities strictly rely upon communications and hermeneutics - highly imprecise because of the subjectiveness of expression and interpretations.

On the first part, I agree that psychology and others do not have the precision that physics does, since we're dealing with humans and animals, but math does have that level of precision and is a foundation of physics.
I disagree with the second part as these disciplines do huge numbers of studies with predictions, experimentation, testing, replication, and peer verification.

[Interbane]

As for a strict scientific methodology involving testing, replicability, and prediction, psychology, sociology, anthropology, fall very short of said methodology. For these areas of "science" are subject to unobservable truths, and lack both testability, and replicability.

I think you're right, these fields aren't in the same category as the hard sciences. Are they still referred to as soft science? Experiments can give us some information, but it's easily contested and problematic.

It can only be a personal opinion expressed by individuals who reject anecdotal tales of "miraculous" events. There is zero scientific basis to support any such contention.

Zero basis to contest the anecdotes? Unless there is first evidence to support the anecdotes, there is no reason to contest them, scientific or otherwise. You can find an anecdote of every possible informational permutation. There's anecdotes for talking spiders, jello hailstones, thousandth dimensions, and even dwarfs living under the mountains.

There's math in this mess somewhere. Should we entertain an infinite number of anecdotes, or should there be a filter in place that narrows the field a bit? Of course, there aren't an infinite number. But there are far too many to analyze every one. An anecdote alone isn't enough. Or with Scientology or Alien abductions in mind, even groups of anecdotes aren't enough.

As a sidebar, there are documented reports of "medical miracles" described as such, due to the highly improbable, virtually impossible nature of their occurrence.

As millions or billions of people fall sick over the course of generations, the laws of probability predict that one in a million or one in a billion "virtually impossible" instances of healing will happen.

With that said, we still are nowhere near complete understanding. But we need not reach further than necessary when attempting to explain seemingly miraculous events. In our ignorance, we often overlook the mundane explanations for more majestic ones. Sometimes, it's just math playing tricks on our psychology.

The irony is that scientific progress has, in a sense, led to more chaos rather than less.

This tells us that reality is more complex than we thought it was before science came around. We came up with simplistic explanations. It's much easier to attribute some mysterious phenomenon to an intelligent agent than it is to attribute it to a physical mechanism. If you conclude that an intelligent agent is the cause of something, the mystery is contained.

Where these questions arise, the secular scientist's position is that science will eventually provide the answer. That approach is the other side of the, 'God of the gaps,' canard which the secular scientists invoke against creationists.

There is a track record that lends support to the scientific position. Many of the technologies today are based on understanding that had previously not been understood. If a large percentage of our previous questions have turned out to be answered by science, we know many of the current ones will as well. On the flip side, many of the questions we thought were only answered by an appeal to a deity turned out to be naturalistic. You seem to be fairly dismissive of these trends Stahrwe.

it's highly disingenuous to point the dirty finger at other institutions while turning away from the horrors caused by a morally relativistic secular community that uses science as its handmaiden to justify its actions (eugenics, racial superiority, etc).

I think it's human nature to put blinders on with this sort of thing. If you haven't noticed, agnostics/atheists on Booktalk condemn the horrors caused by the abuse of science and technology. What I see more often is the dismissal of the horrors caused by religion. Not by you, perhaps, but Stahrwe always has a rationalization ready for the atrocities that use religion as justification. I think eugenics was motivated more by a warped philosophy than it was science. After all, science may tell us what IS, but in developing an OUGHT you need philosophy or religion.

[DWill]

I understand what you're saying here, DWill. And I don't think we are too far off in agreement.

Science defined broadly as a systematic search for truth, then yes, I'd agree that psychology, psychiatry, linguistics, math, anthropology, etc are part of a family that refers to itself as science.

As for a strict scientific methodology involving testing, replicability, and prediction, psychology, sociology, anthropology, fall very short of said methodology. For these areas of "science" are subject to unobservable truths, and lack both testability, and replicability.
The humanities strictly rely upon communications and hermeneutics - highly imprecise because of the subjectiveness of expression and interpretations.


Do you disagree?

In some cases, the "-ologies" you exclude from science might involve true experimentation--why not? But that they are very different in general from sciences that must be derived from mathematics, such as physics, is clear. We aren't going to expect from anthropology the tight formulae we'd find in physics. That isn't a strength of physics or a weakness of anthropology; it's just the way those fields are. I like what old, common-sense Aristotle says concerning the precision we expect: "Our discussion will be adequate if it has a much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts...for it is the the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific truths.: (Nicomachean Ethics)

[Interbane]

it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific truths.

I found the last part of Aristotle's quote interesting. Mathematicians nowadays apply probability to reasoning, using Bayesian statistics, based off inductive reasoning. And in science, the wording of the theory is of consequence. Words must be accurate in how they try to describe what's happening. The popular way to understand relativity for the general masses, for example, is to read a well written book. Since we all specialize, we can't all be mathematicians. So a rhetorician/mathematician must serve as translator.

It seems Aristotle could have been wrong about those two. For the soft sciences, perhaps science will creep in further and further, via statistics mining and advances in neurobiology and imaging. Maybe some psychiatric issues will be isolated down to specific neural nets, or cell and chemical imbalances.

Part of the problem with falsification is that no single theory or hypothesis can reliably be called false, because the problem could be anywhere in the web of theories. Here is an easy, interesting to read article explaining it. The web of theories has definitely been creeping into soft science since Aristotle's time. If there are theories in anthropology that meet the criteria of a theory and mesh with in the web of theories, isn't it science? The science is really only a supplement, I guess, but it supplements a lot more than it did even 100 years ago.

[Robert Tulip]

Walking on water had nothing to do with turning gravity off. To advocate that it did demonstrates a lack of understanding, or at least appreciation of the discussion of metaphysics and devolves to detriment of said advocate.

1. Mr. Tulip stated God stopped gravity "when He made the sun stop in the sky so the Jews could smite the heathen." Nothing to do with walking on water.
2. How do you know what supernatural mechanisms were used to walk on water?

Landroid, I think you misread my comment. Stahrwe is absolutely correct that I associated our Good Lord's miraculous failure to sink with his spooky dad miraculously switching gravity off, if only in a highly localised way.

If I may clarify, my actual view is that miracles are impossible, and all Biblical claims about miracles originate from allegorical myths, not from actual experience. I tried to expand on that later in the post.

stahrwe said (Science) has created questions which will never be answerable within the existence of human beings. Where these questions arise, the secular scientist's position is that science will eventually provide the answer.

This is not necessarily true. For example, I don't think it is possible to learn much about the vast expanses that lie outside of our observable universe. Yes, there may be other questions that appear to be unanswerable now, but ultimately yield to further investigation.

My view is that we can answer questions about how the Bible was constructed, by applying knowledge about cultural evolution, political psychology and other scientific disciplines. Any assertion of supernatural agency is false, and nothing but a primitive distraction from real analysis.

[LanDroid]

Yep, I did misread your comment, so my question # 1 above is not valid. However question # 2 is still interesting; stahrwe claims it had nothing to do with turning gravity off.

[stahrwe]

Where have all the moderators gone?

The word 'miracle' does not appear anywhere in the article so why is walking on water allowed to be interjected by some rather than maintaining the focus on addressing the specifics of Stacy' s article?

As for exact sciences v. Less exact sciences, the distinction, as well the reasons for the distinction, are clearly laid out in the article.

As for her having 7 children ... odd that causes a pause when the fact that she has a PhD in chemistry from Penn State doesn't.

Allow me to add a fact that may give you pause, while she was working on her PhD, she moonlighted as a stripper.

[Robert Tulip]

why is walking on water allowed to be interjected by some rather than maintaining the focus on addressing the specifics of Stacy' s article?

The article critiques the materialist worldview by saying "human intellect cannot tolerate such confinement". What is that other than a statement of belief in miracles?

I expanded on the mockery about miracles with discussion of several such gross errors in the article.