this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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When was the last time there wasn't an atheist ranting about how evil Christians are?
Seems to me fundy Christians and atheists are two sides of the same obnoxious coin.
The problem is there is no edge on that coin.
You can't really debate on whether to trust science or have faith. They are antipodal way of thinking.
One thing you could do is reduce the two to their consequences for society and pick which one is wrong using your moral instinct or personal philosophy.
(You can even do like some people and choose when to apply each one...)
But you sure won't make people shut up about their own morals and vision for society. It's too involving, we're bound to be obnoxious.
They really aren't. Science is about understanding how things work, and religion is about pondering our place in the universe, and morals. It's really only fundamentalists that take scriptures literally and the fundamentalist atheists that believe all religious people are fundamentalists.
The only thing worse than being cornered by someone saying "have you been saved by Jesus Christ our lord and saviour" is being stuck talking to an atheist that'll go on for much longer about their belief that religion caused all the world's problems. At least a religious person is capable of saying something positive now and then.
They do overlap in their goals.
God is the creator of the universe science describe. God itself, if he existed, would be a topic of science.
Science is answering our pondering about our place in the universe. We can also be scientists and create a moral belief system that's not based on God.
Separating them is part of the compartmentalization we do to avoid conflict or our self contradictions.
Fundamentalists in both religion and atheism think the other view is wrong and should not exist. That's very different from just recognizing we have different point of views.
And atheists aren't all such morons to think religion is such a problem. Most atheist can respect religious people as long as they're not fundamentalist.
That wouldn't be science. It would be a religion.
For most of history science was done by the religious because few other people were literate. We long ago decided it would be better to have people specialized in science, and separated science from religion. And it worked really well.
Now you want to turn science into a religion? We already know that wouldn't work very well. Why would you want this? It seems to me you're not really against the concept of religion you just don't like the religions we currently have.
Science isn't about beliefs. It depends on people being skeptical of everything. Searching for empirical evidence that's contrary to current theories so those theories can be improved and sometimes even replaced. Science is a process. Mixing morals and beliefs into science makes for bad morals and bad science.
Science is a method to find truth by telling us how to construct proofs.
What we call rationality in general, in which science is based on, is to use proof to believe in something.
Whereas faith and so religion is believing without proof.
So as a scientist you do believe in any theory that has been proven. And of course you change your beliefs with each new information.
Believing isn't just a word we use for religion, it also means to accept something is true.
I don't think most scientists were religious, but for the one that were, people are never coherent, they can use science for some beliefs and religion for others even if that's contradictory.
As for moral, i didn't explicitly say it's science, because it isn't, it's philosophy. But scientists that don't want to believe in God and his morals have created other philosophies and morals.
Some based on the same premise of rationality as science. For which science can even be a tool.
Conversely the foundation of science always was motivated by philosophical questions about reality. And it's application always had concerned about morals.
P.S. I don't have faith, and i do think most current religions have bad morals and are just manipulative organizations. But most religious people are not part of them, most of them are good people. Their faith isn't a problem for me or anyone, and can even be good driving force.
To paraphrase Dr. Jones... Science is the search for FACT. Not truth. If it's truth you're are interested in the philosophy class is down the hall.
You seem to have science mixed up with philosophy. There is an argument for science being a subset of philosophy since it's governed by a philosophy. But mixing up science with other parts of philosophy is just bad science. If you declare a theory to be the Truth then it's impossible to make changes to that theory.
Back when it was the Earth being the center of the Universe was considered to be the truth then people have to create some crazy complicated models to explain the movement of the planets. Perhaps if they had more advanced mathematics they would have been able to accurately predict the movements of the planets while keeping the Earth at the center. But since science isn't about The Truth, it is only concerned with theories that work, everyone switched over to the Copernicus model for the solar system because it worked.
Someone other than scientists can debate how central the role of humans (and therefore the Earth) are in universe. Science shouldn't have to worry about having to weigh in on those debates.
If a theory best fits the evidence then that's the theory that's used until more evidence requires the theory be changed or replaced. The philosophical or religious ramifications are for the philosophers and theologians to discuss.
You're right, it's probably not right way ro put it, it's not The truth in the philosophical sens.
Although science is based on the premise such a truth exist in regard to reality. Aka what we call realism in ontology. So i think we can see science as a subset of philosophy in that sens.
However i don't think science is just about facts, it's also about understanding them to a point we can predict them. That's what we call theory or model. Hence the distinction between experimental and theoretical science.
So what i really meant by truth is what we think is the true theories to explain phenomenons.
That's why i said we adapt our beliefs to proof. We don't know if a model is correct or not, and we say we believe it's true if there is enough evidence.
However, what allows us to change our mind is the fact that we can't never be 100% sure if something is true. Leaving always a possibility to correct our belief if new proof is found.
(This idea to use probability for our beliefs is based on Bayesian epistemology.)
...
For your exemple, Greeks already had pretty good geometrical knowledge, Ptolemy created this idea of epicyclic trajectories to explain geocentrism. Which is what the model of Copernicus would have resulted in earth's frame of reference.
(Of course Greek's models were not as good as Copernicus, mostly because of their obsession with finding mathematics in the universe.)
What made Galileo say his observations proved heliocentrism, and so Copernicus, is the movement of other stars around Jupiter.
But dispite being close, Copernicus model didn't actually worked, and so neither did Ptolemy's idea of epicycle, because they had circular trajectories.
It was Kepler, based on the observations of Tycho Brahe, who created a model that actually worked using elliptical trajectories, later formalize by Newton.
(Einstein later explained how frames of reference are all physically equal. Making geocentric frame of reference not technically wrong.)
Just to end on your last point, what i mix up isn't science with philosophy but rather scientists. Scientists are the one that needs philosophy, they are the one concerned by moral decisions, not science itself. That's an important distinction in most context...
What do you even mean? By that standard everyone is obnoxious.
Or perhaps you think the lightweight religious folk are magically less obnoxious? I dunno.