An obnoxious atheist and an obnoxious fundamentalist are often going to have very similar views of religions the fundamentalist isn't part of.
An obnoxious atheist and an obnoxious fundamentalist are often going to have very similar views of religions the fundamentalist isn't part of.
Nope, not even close. Those are sound scientific theories that work according to our present knowledge, but they are untested and not accepted. They are theories that need evidence to show whether they are actually true or not. Scientist do not dogmatically say, String Theory is true no matter what comes up. They say the math works, but lets see if it is a predictive model. This is how they recently found the Higgs boson, or proved Relativity to be right.
Scientist do not say, "I have no proof, I just have faith". It is the opposite. They need objective confirmation.
Science is nothing like religious dogma and I hate this fallacy.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
Or believers are atheists about every other God but theirs.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
The important distintion is that with regards to science, it's a faith in the idea that eventually the big questions will be answered through a rigourous process of experimentation and verification of results. Science is the evolution of factual knowledge.
Religion is a constant re-hashing of existing information with no actual proof in an effort to prop up already held beliefs. It's static. There is no evolution of ideas, in fact expansive reinterpretation is frowned upon.
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That depends on whether the scientist is a positivist or relativist. If the latter, it's more a faith that those questions that can be answered through rigorous process will be, and there may be some truths that are simply unknowable (or far enough beyond our observational and/or perceptual capacities to amount to unknowables).
I'm going to assume from that post that you yourself have religious belief. I've no doubt that you've come across some arrogant and condescending atheists in your time. Equating their 'misplaced' levels of intelligence with that of flat-earthers just doesn't hold weight though.
Believers in science and rationality base their worldview on very easily achievable and demonstrable proofs. Evidence to support the scientific model is on permanent display all around us, all the time. We all did the experiments in school right? There's a reason they all worked and hopefully imparted knowledge to all the children that practised or witnessed them. Science isn't dogmatic either, if a new level of understanding comes into being then the scientific model adopts that new learning rather than furiously trying to discredit it. Nearly every single facet of our modern day society is entirely dependant on our current scientific knowledge being true and useful in helping to make our lives happier, healthier and more convenient. This isn't just some claptrap that we've thrown together to suit our own purposes.
The diatribes offered by the flat-earth movement, creationism, geocentrism and the rest are always centred around stories or theories that can be very easily disproved and are often proffered for ulterior motives. Their imagined intellectual superiority on any level is entirely delusional. Understanding how the reality that surrounds us works may sometimes come across as arrogant to a believer but the rationale behind it is entirely sound.
Honestly, that kind of depends on the scientist. I agree with you in that rejecting a new idea in science requires winning a logic duel, usually backed up with a more accurate, refuting data analysis. There are, however, scholars out there that will fight to the death rather than have one of their findings disputed, or even subjected to boundary conditions. Unfortunately, because our measures and methods tend to be less-than perfect, it's not too hard for theoretical orthodoxy to attack controversial findings. Old ideas usually don't get overturned by a single finding. It takes a dogpile of replication to make us rewrite the books.
As an ideal, I agree with your statement of what science should be. In practice, it can be somewhat messier.
Maybe that last post was a tad idealistic but I still feel that the point it made is sound overall. However slow moving scientific progress can sometimes be is still a world away from somehow managing to get your mitts on a gyroscope and then completely rejecting everything that it tells you because it isn't confirming your outlandish beliefs .
I completely agree with your point though.
The good thing about science is it doesn't depend on some one scientist somewhere agreeing or disagreeing. It is a collective process that comes to conclusions based on consensus formed by the evidence. Einstein did not like Quantum Mechanics, but even he could not stop it's validity being accepted.
Last edited by Kirby101; 08-02-2019 at 02:56 PM.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!