In a Nut Shell

another redundant word.....

 

Move on to where?

 

good question

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwNjV2pMwQg"]YouTube - Are science and religion incompatible?

This is essentially what I was saying.

Thank Okie.


"Does a supernatural exist or not, is not somthing science can measure." (right at the end of the video, albeit a different one than referenced earlier)


This video has her explain methodological materialism in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GViS6Z2Y7L0"]YouTube - Eugenie Scott explains why science is agnostic.

I'd rename her "philosophical materialism" as "metaphysical materialism". The guy after the video saying that the way to eventually convince Creationists by having their ideas publicly mocked is very flawed though.

 

And then the lord Science said unto his engineers, let thy circuit boards hold
iron, that they may conduct electricity.

-Sagan 3:14

 

Reviso, sometimes I don't quite understand what you are trying to say. Maybe this is due to something lacking on my end.

 

if something is irrelevant there is no point in informing it as such.... unless it's awareness of it's irrelevance itself is relevant to the current situation .. therefore it ceases to be be irrelevant by merely existing

you just made us all relevant :mickey:

 

Science essentially has no religious affiliation, it is a tool for testing information. But this is not a science forum, it is a religious debate forum. The fact is that the tool that is the scientific method has been used to disprove, debunk, and expose countless supernatural claims while even being rooted and born from a theist society it has never been able to prove one single supernatural claim. Science essentially has no negative agenda. Science does not set out to disprove anything, it can only prove or confirm information. Disproof only really happens by proving something to the contrary. It is very politically correct and sensitive to so say science can not prove supernatural because of the very unnatural nature of the supernatural. Nor could I ever disprove imaginary delusions to those delusional! Still the fact score of God VS nature stands at Zero to "we lost count" = probability in favor of nature with all things considered and really if there was a God there would be no question about it.

 

The funk is really something.

 

god vs. nature?

that doesn't make any sense to me.



to me, there is fantasy and then there is what is natural. supernatural describes that which does exist, but can not, at the present moment, be understood, with our level of development- intellectual and technological.

i suppose it is a silly word.

 

God vs Nature ~or~ Supernatural vs Natural ~or~ fantasy vs reality... It's a nutjob world.

Much of what was once thought to be supernatural has been debunked. So supernatural absolutely DOES NOT "describe that which exist, but ..." ~50% remains yet to be proven imaginary bullshit.

 

my point was: that which was once thought to be supernatural, and was debunked, is fantasy, but that doesn't mean everything else thought to be supernatural is.

hypnotism and talking birds could serve as examples of this.

 

Relevance is a human concept, relative to the perceptions and values of the believer. To deny the relevance of humans. Our knowledge of the natural world is entirely a product of human inquiry, including science. To deny human relevance and transfer meaning to an inanimate cosmos makes you irrelevant, but not necessarily the rest of us.

 

It is irrational, not scientific, to make assertions about what we will know someday, what science will prove in the future, or what will or will not be proven imaginary bullshit.

 

It's sometimes possible for science to discover things that make certain kinds of religious claims untenable. For example, I think science has done a good job in discrediting Young Earth Creationism; a flat ,cornered earth; an earth-centered universe, and talking animals. You can still find people walking around loose who believe in these things, and you can even argue with them on Hip Forums--or at least I can in the Christian Sanctuary. On the subject of talking animals, for instance, I was told Satan would have the power to take the form of a snake and talk, and that God could also make that donkey talk. I asked if He made reindeer fly, too, and was told "No, but He could." Rejecting such beliefs isn't, strictly speaking, a matter of science--it's a matter of judgment, which involves a certain amount of experience, common sense, intuition and good judgment. Hard atheists like yourself don't like to acknowledge this, but there's no getting away from it. I'm willing to bet my life on reason,the scientific method, Occam's razor, and Hume's approach to miracles. Also on God and Jesus, whether or not they "exist".

 

Like if we discovered an asteroid, and said we could calculate its trajectory?

 

a better example would be the many assumptions those working in the realm of science have made in the past about the structure, movements, and functions of various "heavenly" bodies in the universe.

you have referenced this many times, your favorite one being the belief in a flat earth.

 

No. Science is relatively familiar with asteroids and bullets and thier trajectories. We know that some trajectories are linear, some curvilinear, and that there can be intervening variables affecting both. It's quite different to say that because science has been able to explain some things, it will some day be able to predict everything, as you seem to be saying. Bertrand Russell said that a truly logical person wouldn't expect the sun to rise the next day, his point being that just because something happens in the past, it doesn't necessarily mean it will happen in the future. It's just a good bet. I expect sunrise tomorrow morning, but then again, I never said I was completely logical, and the odds seem pretty good. Inference from past patterns is based on judgment grounded in experience and intuition.

Science tends to concentrate on problems it has reason to believe will lead to fruitful results. The "hard" sciences look down their noses at the social sciences, for the good reason that studying social phenomenon is less amenable to rigorous methods. I think it would be irrational to say that some day we will discover the cure for all diseases and how to make humans live forever. It could happen, but those germs are damned resourceful in developing immunities. It wasn't long ago that "experts" like Daniel Bell were crowing about the "End of Ideology"--that humans had outgrown fights over basic ideas and ideals, there was basic agreement on secular values and we would have to learn to live with the boredom of a peaceful world. Along came radical fundamentalism, Islamic and otherwise. Boy were those experts wrong! From the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, scientists were confident in the "laws" of a Newtonian universe. The Einstein and Heisenberg came along. Scientists are more humble today. Of course a revolution in thinking comparable to relativity and quantum physics could never happen again, and we're now on a trajectory to complete understanding of the secrets of the universe. You betcha!

 

I understand what you're implying, call it irrational assertion, assumption, or just plain ignorance but at some point assumptions can turn in to real probabilities when a preponderance of data is observed.

Say you're counting a million ballots and you open the first one and it's for option "A". It would be quite an ignorant assumption to conclude that "A" is going to win. Moving forward to 249,999 ballots and the score is 249,999 to Zero, at this point the logical laws of probabilities are going to kick in and it's no so irrational to place your bets. Especially when supporters of "B" have been shaking the box frantically looking for just one vote, just one real proof because that's all they need but the odds against them are increasing astronomically with every minute and with every ballot...

 

On that, we agree. In an ironic bit of role reversal, I just got back from lunch with some mostly Buddhist friends in which I found myself defending science against people who were saying that science is just another system of mythology. I pointed out that science differs from other belief systems in enabling us to predict and control important parts of reality. It gave us the technology to produce the cars we drive,the GPS systems we travel by, the rockets we go to the moon and mars with, and the internet, inter alia. Yes, they said, but does it make the sun shine? Does it make you happy? And just because we can use a theory to predict something doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Newtonian physics can get us by in many contexts, although we have reason to believe it's inadequate in understanding reality.

On the sunshine question, I had to concede that science doesn't cause sunshine, and isn't intended to do so. I argued that it did help us to understand why the sun shines, in a way that ties in with a variety of other phenomena, some of which can be useful knowledge. Down the road, I think a naturalistic explanation of the sun gets us farther than a supernaturalistic one--e.g., that God made the sun shine or that the sun is a god. The Aztecs believed the latter and thought that unless the Sun God was supplied with daily doses of tonali from human hearts, it would die. The Spaniards didn't believe that, and put a stop to human sacrifice. The sun is still shining, disproving at least the sacrificial part of Aztec theology.

On the happiness question, I countered with J.S. Mill's affirmation: "It's better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." I believe that, although I admit to finding science intrinsically satisfying. Ignorance can sometimes be bliss, but what we don't know can hurt us badly, and I'm grateful to my ancestors for taking a bite out of that apple.

On the Newtonian physics question, I'd agree that all human knowledge is tentative, which can have the dual advantage of making us humble and increasing our desire to discover more. Just when we think it's all "cut and dried" something comes along to shake us out of our complacency. In that sense, I think there are spiritual and moral components to science.

So let me pick your brain, you and the other science wonks: what else do I say to them if the subject comes up again?