Think of the scientific consensus as a statue being chiseled to represent some live model. Scientists look at the real situation, say a posing woman (gravity). Our first attempts to understand the real situation just lead us to a large block of marble that is the right height width and depth, but it’s just a cubic volume.(things fall “down”)
Newton comes along and chisels it down so that it is a beautiful, and accurate representation of the model. Most people who look at the woman and the statue of the woman can see no difference. But SOME people notice that there are some details missing. Laplace takes up the chisel and carves out that little dimple in her cheek that everyone else had overlooked. Now it looks closer to the woman than ever before.
Einstein comes in years later, many people have taken up the chisel and improved the statue so that it more accurately represents the posing woman. Einstein says, you know what this statue looks almost exactly like the woman, but nobody bothered to carve the ground she stands on. It’s just un-carved blocky debris. It will be a much better representation if I integrate her into her surroundings.
He goes to work improving the statue. It doesn’t ruin all that came before, but instead adds to it. Improves it. Makes the statue representing the woman more accurate.
Einstein is thought of as a revolution in science, and rightly so, but when he described the fact that E=MC2, that did not change the fact that what goes up must come down. Newton still runs your life. Everything he proposed is still right as far as any physics you will experience in your day.
This is a misunderstanding of terms.Ant:
is to say, the theories we hold today as true are as falsifiable as the theories they replace. That is what history has taught us. Scientific truth is based on the current assumptions and principles adopted by the institution itself.
Falsifiable doesn’t mean “almost certainly wrong, so the reality could be the complete opposite of this”.
Falsifiable means that it makes a very specific prediction and you can test that prediction to see if it is accurate. and if that prediction is not reflective of reality, then it is incorrect. And that doesn’t mean that if one thing is wrong we just throw the whole thing out.
Take the FTL neutrinos. If that proves to be accurate, we don’t just throw out relativity. It has to be corrected, or find a better explanation, and because of all the corroborative evidence in support of relativity already in place, that new explanation would be mostly the same as relativity, but with some correction to account for the FTL behavior.
We know that in some respects general relativity has already been falsified because of the implications it has for particles that we know are incorrect, otherwise quantum mechanics wouldn’t work. And likewise, quantum mechanics doesn’t work in the realm of relativity.
Though both theories are falsified in those extreme realms that they aren’t able to deal with, they have been demonstrated to be certainly correct in other realms where the predictions bear out.
That is not based on assumptions, but evidence. When that evidence is in accord to the predictions made by scientists then they were right. Empirically. Objectively. And verifiably. Not through any force of assumption. That means anyone who wants can perform the same experiment and confirm through independent means that they were indeed accurately representing the state of the universe.
Here you seem to be asserting science acts as a governing body. That isn’t the case. Science is a reporter. It observes, puts observations into words called “laws”, sure, but those are simply our descriptions of what happens, and when we discover our descriptions differ from reality, then it is the “law” which changes to fit nature. We don’t try to deny it and assert our words in place of what can be demonstrated to be true.Ant:
It sets the rules, definitions, and is the final arbiter of what is judged as universal, necessary, and certain knowledge.
This is true. Instead, science relies on confidence, or error bars, if you like. Though we can’t say for 100% confidence on most things we can look at the odds and determine what is the right determination beyond any reasonable doubt. And though there is always a degree of error, and the acknowledgement that there could be some margin of error, that margin of error is usually identified. It might not be perfect, but we can send space ships past the outer solar system and beyond with that math, and I’ll take that any day.Ant:
Having said that, science can never achieve certainty about reality - why the natural world is the way it is now, or how it will be in the future.
We make all kinds of choices on weaker statistical confidence, and arguing with the empirical measurements and determinations based on that evidence is a losing position.
But do you really appreciate the power of science, I wonder? Limited though our senses are, we do have instrumentation that can detect particles that are ludicrously small and elusive. The very seems and threads of the universe have been exposed this way. Things that exist far outside our ability to sense organically. Science can, has, and does accept what cannot be seen with our own eyes.Ant:
And science is limited to things that can only be observed by our limited senses. That does not mean that because we can not detect something with our limited senses in conjunction with the limits of our instruments, that it does not exist - like a divine intelligence (yes, God with a capital "G
And like me, I doubt you would get them to categorically rule the possibility out. You would be able to get answers from them from a position of statistical confidence. Think of this. Is it possible for a random gust of wind to assemble a sand castle? There is nothing in physics which indicates that that is impossible. But statistically, there are a disproportionately gigantic number of other ways for the sand to be arranged, vs that one very specific shape. “Could” it happen? Yes. “Will” it happen? No. With confidence.") To rule that possibility out would be unscientific. No true scientist would rule that out.
And that is dealing with something which we know is physically possible. There is no evidence at all that anything like a conventionally described god is even possible in our universe.
Could there be A god? Possibly. Is there a god? No. Not at all likely. With confidence.
If there was a god, is it Jesus? No. Even less likely.
And of course every instance of something previously believed to be magical and which is now understood has turned out to be resoundingly non-magical.
Ant:
I find it curious that because I am sticking to my guns about this entire science vs religion matter, that I am now being indirectly labeled a troll. One can only wonder about that.
I was actually drawing a contrast between your behavior and past trolls, and how that difference has been surprising, as most who bother to chase this rabbit are usually trolls.Johnson1010:
maybe the better description, is that it is more common that the highly motivated believer is more likely to be a fundamentalist, and that is why we run into so many of them.
As always, I think that word does a disservice in this context, RT.RT:That is true in the trivial sense that we do not know if the sun will rise tomorrow. But science gives us extremely high levels of probability based on the assumption (faith) that the future will be like the past.
Yep.Colin:
It really depends on your philosophy - what priority you give to logical consistency. If you seek a coherent and consistent framework to explain reality, then it does make sense to rule out the supernatural, simply because of the irrational way the supernatural has functioned in philosophy as a way to justify all sorts of untrue claims and political agendas. The complete absence of evidence for a divine intelligence means that we should first try to explain language about God through psychoanalysis, exhausting the extent to which such claims reflect psychological instinct and desire before postulating actual imaginary entities.
Well said.Colin:
As a rule I don't believe science, or more specifically scientists, have ever put any great effort into ruling out the possibility of god, just as no great effort is put into ruling out the possibility of unicorns (a tiring analogy, but an accurate one). Not being a scientist myself but more of a fan of science, I find it frustrating when even obviously intelligent people have the compulsion to fill every gap in knowledge with god (either small or large G). Through the milenia how many of these gaps that were once filled with god eventually filled with rational fact and reason? For me it's happened enough to satisfy my mind that there is probably no god. I would even venture to say that I don't see any evidence of god, but I won't say that the possibility doesn't exist (as minute as it may be).
