posted
I think it would be easier if we came at it from the other direction -- how do you think a normal person would use the scientific method when opening Excel files? Or in other parts of their lives?
It seems to me that most people are far more likely to find something that works and go with it than to rigorously figure things out.
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posted
The scientific method is asking a question, figuring out a way to isolate the variable that might answer the question, then doing so and drawing conclusions from there. Work with that as I retreat back to the bleachers.
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posted
My understanding of the scientific method is you formulate a likely hypothesis, you design an experiment to test it, you collect your data, analyze it, then synthesize this into a theorem.
I think the vast majority of people are stuck in either gathering data or analyzing data. It is a rare person who is either hypothesizing (which involves applying prior theorems to new but appropriately analogous situations) or synthesis.
The issue in the initial link blog is the failure of people to apply theorems to different situations, right? They call this a failure of science education and then pull in by analogy that real scientists should not balk at applying the method to everything in their lives.
The trouble with that is that theorems only work if applied to appropriate phenomena. Say one demonstrates that refraction is a sound theorem. If one tries to explain all behavior of light as a function of refraction, one is going to wind up with explanations that resemble the old maps of the solar system where the Earth was in the middle.
Thus it is with spiritual matters. If one tries to say that faith, love, and self-actualization have to be explained by what we know of biochemistry, we have to go around in eccentric epicycles. It is not a subset of physical reality, but a separable universe of phenomena. One can use the scientific method in this universe, but it is epistemology and metaphysics as well as theology.
If one says that a real scientist can have no religion, I would counter that they can have no philosophy either.
P.S. I will meet King of Men this far: no believer should take particular comfort from the religious witness of a scientist solely because they are a scientist.
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posted
If one says that a real scientist can have no religion, I would point out Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, my father, Francis Collins, etc... Actually, each of those did criticize aspects of their religion, but that didn't make them secular or unfaithful.
I can't say I can agree with some of my Evangelical brothers about Harry Potter or evolution or who's going to Hell or how we can figure out that end times are coming in oh about 20 years (Isaac Newton predicted 2060), but that doesn't stop me from affirming my belief in the existence of God, nor challenge my assertion that Jesus is the real deal.
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quote: P.S. I will meet King of Men this far: no believer should take particular comfort from the religious witness of a scientist solely because they are a scientist.
Of course, I realized this also has the exact same effect with respect to scientists saying they are atheists. It's completely irrelevant to whether they are scientists.
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quote:It's completely irrelevant to whether they are scientists.
That's only if you believe that religious belief is compatible with a respect for science, which is specifically what KoM (and the original blogger) is saying is not true.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
So you cannot worship God and Science? That's quite catchy.
I guess I'll try to read the blog again. I guess I was mainly trying to figure out if King of Men considers himself a scientist or merely has respect for it. I don't think science deserves any respect of itself. It is useful, but has no more inherent worth than gold.
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posted
Would you say the same of religion, or does it as a rival epistemology somehow manage to have inherent worth?
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Science is worth enough for governments to invest large amounts of money into funding for scientific programs such as NASA, the NIH, etc. Seeing we're above the gold standard now, I think science is more worthwhile than gold, to be honest. And religion deals not in such material measurement. Gosh, the letters of Paul are awesome.
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posted
Religion is bread. It is less valuable as currency, but more valuable in the absence of a market.
quote:If, outside of their specialist field, some particular scientist is just as susceptible as anyone else to wacky ideas, then they probably never did understand why the scientific rules work. Maybe they can parrot back a bit of Popperian falsificationism; but they don't understand on a deep level, the algebraic level of probability theory, the causal level of cognition-as-machinery.
I doubt most scientists do consider cognition as machinery. I worked on building a cognitive science major for a while (since my university didn't have one.) I mean, when we had that article here on Hatrack about whether Welsh might be a island of East Indian speech, there were plenty of scientists who thought it was a great idea and thought my explanations for why it couldn't be the case closed-minded. I don't see scientists penetrating other sciences, let alone religion. Though in the end I can't really defend linguistics as a science. Perhaps it is the years of being shooed out of the club that makes me hostile.
I'll check on their post in which they claim emotions are okay but not faith.
P.S. I didn't see where those posts were going with that whole question. At one point they started talking about Mr. Spock though.
Well, I guess I can see where it's a problem for the exercise of science to be taken out of the "real world" and used only in a laboratory. But that's because laboratories allow things you don't get in the real world. I think religion also suffers from being compartmentalized. When I was younger, I wished Mormons had nuns so I could get away from the world and be holy.
Also, I've been known to use a shoelace tying analogy with respect to one of my big theological questions, though it didn't posit the absurd idea that tying a shoelace is dependent on sight. Oh, I see, it's everytime you look down to see if your laces are untied. You know, some folks just double tie them and don't worry about it.
quote:It's completely irrelevant to whether they are scientists.
That's only if you believe that religious belief is compatible with a respect for science, which is specifically what KoM (and the original blogger) is saying is not true.
And there are quite a number of counter-examples to indicate that they are indeed compatible.
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quote:Originally posted by String: I don't know what you mean. What's a "parser"?
Oh, silly me. It’s a Computer Science reference: Most of the computer programming languages are compiled, that is, the programmer writes the “code” using evolved structures (as opposed to writing in machine code, binary or assembler). The compilation process does the “translation” from “human level code” to “machine level code”, basically, so that the machine can execute it thereafter. Now, most of the compiled languages have another previous component, that is a parser, which analyses the “syntactic correctness” of the “human level code”. In other words, the compiler detects the missing semicolons, the misspelling of the “key words” in the language and doesn’t allow for compilation a “badly formatted” chain of commands.
This is where the analogy comes from: My being a foreigner to the English, introduces the need for a “parser”, in order to extract any meaning from a message written in English. The “compilation” phase would correspond to my understanding the message, and the “execution” part would be my response to the “commands” (that is the original message).
You see, if I can’t parse a message, I’m unable to answer. So my observation was that you wrote a message that I couldn’t parse (maybe others can) and I was asking to explain what were you trying to say, or at least complete the message as my parser said: “incomplete phrase, premature full stop”
quote:Originally posted by String: As far as I can tell if you think you "know" that there is no God, your taking it on faith.
Therefore, I ask you: What about my taking it on faith ? (whoever was the "you" in your response) Maybe you wanted to say that “Your taking it on faith is obvious” or “Your taking it on faith is uncalled-for” or something like that. Can you help?
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I think it would be easier if we came at it from the other direction -- how do you think a normal person would use the scientific method when opening Excel files? Or in other parts of their lives?
Well, it is obvious to me that our misunderstanding comes from different and “incompatible” definitions for the “well known concept of scientific method” … You decline the invitation to present your definition, nonetheless, here’s mine:
The Scientific Method is based not simply on “trial and error”, or on “experiments”, but on the fact that those “experiments” and the resulting “data” are objectively analysable and better yet, they are duplicable.
(BTW, the lack of duplicability puts Religious experience outside the Scientific Method.)
Now, you could verify that I didn’t say that a normal person would use the scientific method when opening Excel files. I could have worded that better. My fault. Yours is thinking that I was talking using your definition of the term.
The point was to show that in practical life, one is less inclined to use “religious experience” as opposed to “scientific experience”. And that’s why I named a purely technological tool, such as a software application. The science used in developing that tool, including the hardware it uses in order to function, is what prompted me the association with the scientific method. I would argue, nevertheless that while prayer wouldn’t help in software usage, the fact that we can learn to use such an application is because the process is objectively analysable and duplicable. You make a double-click on that icon and the file opens. It’s as simple as that, because if it wasn’t, we shouldn’t be using it in practical life. If that’s not the basic of “Scientific Method” then I’ll be waiting to see what are you actually taking about.
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: It seems to me that most people are far more likely to find something that works and go with it than to rigorously figure things out.
Well, for me “rigorously figuring things out” is not equivalent with the Scientific Method, while BEING ABLE to do so if interested, is. When you are talking about “finding something that works and going with it” is rather closer to everyday superstition, and can be a self-sustained process of “proof”, like the Horoscopes and Religion, and I doubt that people do that in their practical life more than using the duplicability of action and effect.
posted
Are the assumptions that atheists make about theists based on the belief that theists have no evidence whatsoever that a Creator exists? I'm thinking here of Megabyte's analogy about the teacup in space. Secondly, is it fair for the atheist to determine for the theist what does or doesn't count as evidence for a Creator? If not, shouldn't atheists just shut the hell up about what they know or don't know, especially if they indicate that they think it's high time for all the theists to just shut up?
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quote:Originally posted by Reshpeckobiggle: So you don't agree with Megabyte's analogy, then?
To the extent that the analogy is apt, I agree with it. If you're beliefs are different in quality than that which describes the teapot, then no.
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Just I I'm clear on this from the bleachers: When you, MattP, say "they're based on the nature of that evidence," "they" are the assumptions, and the "evidence" is what theists have to prove that a Creator exists?
Am I correct in interpreting this to mean "atheists are assuming that theists are less- or unwilling to use science as evidence of their claims because the evidence they present is largely unscientific?"
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posted
Sounds like a fair summation, potential semantic niggling notwithstanding. Also, I don't claim to speak for all atheists, nor do I want to characterize all theists. I can only say what my own experiences indicate to me.
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Funny you say that -about only being able to speak from your own experiences- because when theists point to what they consider incontrovertible evidence of a Creator, it is usually along the same lines.
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I'm only indicating the source of my personal opinion and emphasizing that I acknowledge the weakness of that opinion. In other words, "This is what I think, and it's based on limited personal experience, so don't take it as a universal."
Do religious messengers tend to intentionally minimize the impact of their message and acknowledge the weakness of their evidence like this? If not, I'm not sure what parallel you are trying to draw here.
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The hardest thing for me was to accept that there are theists that put “religious knowledge” on the same level, or even higher, relative to “scientific knowledge”. See the often used comparison between the existence of a deity and a cup in one’s hand. (Not the one in orbit in space!)
As long as the two don’t enter in conflict, I don’t really care much. But when they enter in conflict, and the representatives of some Church decide that a person has to die because of their scientific ideas (see the Heliocentric model of the Solar System case), that detracts a lot from the value of “religious knowledge” for me.
posted
The blog post seems to be fairly lacking in reason for what presumes to be a defense of reason. It makes several presumptions about the mindset of believers and scientists that are by no means given.
If religious dogma causes a scientist to reject theories such as Evolution or the General Theory of Relativity without offering a functional replacement, yes, that's a problem. But belief in something spiritual isn't inherently contradictory to what can be observed about the physical world any more than apparent contradictions between quantum mechanics and relativity cause the study of either to be useless. Frankly, assumptions otherwise amount to the kind of demands regarding personal beliefs for which many atheists castigate the religous.
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