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By Godstud
#14965622
Science has never been presented as religion, and if you think that, then you are missing the point, or have a bizarre idea about what science actually is.
By Sivad
#14965625
Rancid wrote:I can't say I've ever had "faith" in science.


Well I know first hand that you believe all kinds of things that you have no rational business believing just because you heard some scientist say it. You're definitely invested quite heavily in the myth of science, you're as invested in that myth as any fundamentalist Christian is invested in the literal truth of scripture.

And even if you weren't being completely dishonest there are millions of liberal bubbleheads that do "believe in science" so this shit is certainly relevant to their delusions.
By Sivad
#14965626
the longstanding attempt to characterize science through a definition or definitive methods has been largely unsuccessful. It has proven incredibly difficult to specify exactly what makes an approach to the world scientific, which obviously problematizes the derogation of nonscience. Second, the appeal to science can obscure the question of which parts of science are being drawn upon. If science consists of a variety of distinctive practices, answering many different questions with many different methodological approaches, then appeals to science simpliciter can obfuscate important questions about which science is being included, which omitted, and how it is analyzed. This is important because different scientific studies and methods often do not align to provide straightforward results: Separate analyses even of the very same data can yield remarkably divergent conclusions (Stegenga 2011).

-Eric Martin, Assistant Professor in History & Philosophy of Science, Baylor University

https://www.iep.utm.edu/sci-ideo/#H6
User avatar
By Godstud
#14965627
Believing in something that is true and verifiable is quite different from believing in something that requires faith, is not necessarily true, and is unverifiable. You fail to differentiate between the two, it appears.

Note: I "believe" that if I heat distilled water past 100C that it will boil under normal atmospheric conditions. That belief is supported by science.
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By Rancid
#14965630
Sivad wrote:Well I know first hand that you believe all kinds of things that you have no rational business believing just because you heard some scientist say it. You're definitely invested quite heavily in the myth of science, you're as invested in that myth as any fundamentalist Christian is invested in the literal truth of scripture.

And even if you weren't being completely dishonest there are millions of liberal bubbleheads that do "believe in science" so this shit is certainly relevant to their delusions.



Question 1:
Is your point that because science isn't perfect & concrete, it's thus requires faith, and thus it's basically just another kind of religion? Last, because it's just another religion, it's ok to reject any claims it makes, even if there is valid/verifiable/repeatable evidence?

Question 2:
You know Baylor University is a Christian school, right? Now, I would agree that science isn't some hard concrete universal thing. However, it is still very much a formalized (or generalized) process that can arrive at objective truths. The fact that it isn't "universal" doesn't invalidate it.

Question 3:
Are you a flat earther?

Godstud wrote:Believing in something that is true and verifiable is quite different from believing in something that requires faith, is not necessarily true, and is unverifiable. You fail to differentiate between the two, it appears.

Note: I "believe" that if I heat distilled water past 100C that it will boil under normal atmospheric conditions. That belief is supported by science.



That's basically it. I think the psychological profile for people like Sivad that strongly believe Science is just another religion, basically have trust issues. The basis for their argument is "I can't trust anyone but myself." Thus there's zero validity to any science.
Last edited by Rancid on 22 Nov 2018 01:02, edited 2 times in total.
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By Rancid
#14965631
One Degree wrote:I think I get where you are coming from. We get tired of science being presented as Gospel. We can’t go too far the other way though.


This isn't a problem with science, this is the problem with people pushing their agenda's. This is not too different from the argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Science is just the tool. It's how people use it that can cause problems.

However, the beauty is, you can use better science to debunk other people's junk science.
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By One Degree
#14965633
Rancid wrote:This isn't a problem with science, this is the problem with people pushing their agenda's. This is not too different from the argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Science is just the tool. It's how people use it that can cause problems.

However, the beauty is, you can use better science to debunk other people's junk science.


I think this is a fair assessment. It gets a little cloudy when a scientist is the one with the agenda, but it still holds true.
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By Rancid
#14965635
Sivad wrote: This is important because different scientific studies and methods often do not align to provide straightforward results: Separate analyses even of the very same data can yield remarkably divergent conclusions (Stegenga 2011).


This one's a good one. As it's missing key points that I think any scientist and engineer understands. With respect to the first part of this statement. Of course it can be very hard to get straightforward results. THe universe is a complicated place. This is why ideas are constantly being revisited/retested/reanalyzed. There's nothing sinister here.

With respect to the second part, yes, of course. Any decent scientist or engineer will agree that this is very possible. It's pretty much always related to what metrics you use. In the case of my job, we look at the same set of data all the time, and different teams come to different conclusions. HOw does this happen? It's basically mostly due to what each group is trying to optimize for. Most of the time, the conclusions don't contradict each other, and when they do, it means we have to revisit everything we're doing. The test design, the data collection, the analysis process. etc. etc. After enough iterations of this, eventually you come to a point where everyone agrees with each other. This is the process.

It's not faith, it's just people using their brains and doing some fucking work.

I would argue this guy is cherry picking specific points and ignoring the big picture to make some kind of stupid argument. I can safely say he either doesn't understand the process of science, or has an agenda.

Edit: A third point could be that he understands science very well and his work is just being misrepresented by people like Sivad.
Last edited by Rancid on 22 Nov 2018 01:35, edited 7 times in total.
User avatar
By Rancid
#14965636
One Degree wrote:I think this is a fair assessment. It gets a little cloudy when a scientist is the one with the agenda, but it still holds true.


Indeed. It's very hard, because all people have their opinions and predispositions. The way we attempt to mitigate this problem is through peer reviewing and retesting ideas in different ways to look for contradictions. This is why research papers are published and open to the public. Anyone can come analyze and call out all the bullshit. Sometimes it takes a while for someone's scientific "conclusions" to get thrown out the window as pure bullshit, but hey, at least there's a means for this to happen. This is probably the easiest argument against the dumb idea that "science is religion".
#14965645
Rancid wrote:Indeed. It's very hard, because all people have their opinions and predispositions. The way we attempt to mitigate this problem is through peer reviewing and retesting ideas in different ways to look for contradictions. This is why research papers are published and open to the public. Anyone can come analyze and call out all the bullshit. Sometimes it takes a while for someone's scientific "conclusions" to get thrown out the window as pure bullshit, but hey, at least there's a means for this to happen. This is probably the easiest argument against the dumb idea that "science is religion".

Science is not religion, but some people claim certain ideas that they believe are science when they have not been scientifically proven. In certain cases, their so-called theory can not even be tested by a scientific method, yet they claim it is proven science. That is when their so-called science has actually become their religious belief. I believe this kind of thinking is what Sivad is writing about.
By Sivad
#14965658
Rancid wrote:Question 1:
Is your point that because science isn't perfect & concrete, it's thus requires faith, and thus it's basically just another kind of religion? Last, because it's just another religion, it's ok to reject any claims it makes, even if there is valid/verifiable/repeatable evidence?


I love how you people go into crazy bullshit mode to defend the faith. I have never suggested that any claim should be rejected based on its source, that's your dishonest misrepresentation of my argument. I clearly stated that all claims should be assessed case by case based on the evidence.

Question 2:
You know Baylor University is a Christian school, right?


:knife: It's a nationally ranked school and IEP is a peer reviewed and edited secular encyclopedia(no religious affiliation).

Now, I would agree that science isn't some hard concrete universal thing. However, it is still very much a formalized (or generalized) process that can arrive at objective truths. The fact that it isn't "universal" doesn't invalidate it.


You're still referring to "it" like it's one thing, there is no capital 'S' science , there are only specific protocols and programs, some are sound and some aren't.


Question 3:
Are you a flat earther?


No, but you might as well be.


That's basically it. I think the psychological profile for people like Sivad that strongly believe Science is just another religion, basically have trust issues. The basis for their argument is "I can't trust anyone but myself." Thus there's zero validity to any science.


Now you're just making my point for me. You're absolutely right, I don't trust science. For people who understand what science is, faith don't enter into it, we want to see the evidence for every claim. "Science" has to prove itself every single time, it gets zero credit for any past success it may have had. It's not an authority, it's not even a reliable source, it's just whatever specific claim that's being made and it's only as good as the evidence to back it.
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By Rancid
#14965660
Hindsite wrote:Science is not religion, but some people claim certain ideas that they believe are science when they have not been scientifically proven. In certain cases, their so-called theory can not even be tested by a scientific method, yet they claim it is proven science. That is when their so-called science has actually become their religious belief. I believe this kind of thinking is what Sivad is writing about.


Sure, and I would agree that's not science.
User avatar
By Rancid
#14965661
Sivad wrote:
I love how you people go into crazy bullshit mode to defend the faith. I have never suggested that any claim should be rejected based on its source, that's your dishonest misrepresentation of my argument. I clearly stated that all claims should be assessed case by case based on the evidence.



:knife: It's a nationally ranked school and IEP is a peer reviewed and edited secular encyclopedia(no religious affiliation).



You're still referring to "it" like it's one thing, there is no capital 'S' science , there are only specific protocols and programs, some are sound and some aren't.




No, but you might as well be.




Now you're just making my point for me. You're absolutely right, I don't trust science. For people who understand what science is, faith don't enter into it, we want to see the evidence for every claim. "Science" has to prove itself every single time, it gets zero credit for any past success it may have had. It's not an authority, it's not even a reliable source, it's just whatever specific claim that's being made and it's only as good as the evidence to back it.


OK, you are 100% right.
By Sivad
#14965663
Rancid wrote:The way we attempt to mitigate this problem is through peer reviewing and retesting ideas in different ways to look for contradictions.


The peer review process is completely dysfunctional and science has a major replication problem. You'd know that if you actually took the time to investigate and understand the reality rather than just being a mindless devotee of "Science".


This is why research papers are published and open to the public.


:lol: You ever heard of a paywall? You know what a subscription to a major journal costs? What a joke.

the dumb idea that "science is religion".


Science isn't the religion, it's your mindless reverence for "Science" that's the religion.
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By Rancid
#14965672
Sivad wrote:The peer review process is completely dysfunctional and science has a major replication problem.


I'm aware of this, however it's a GIANT stretch to say science has a whole has this problem. There are a lot of areas that have this problem (and he problem is being addressed). The biological sciences is one of them, but there are plenty of areas that don't have this problem.

Sivad wrote: :lol: You ever heard of a paywall? You know what a subscription to a major journal costs? What a joke.


I've found plenty of research papers that are not behind paywalls. Most paywallls I've see aren't prohibitive. IEEE is like $50 a year.


Sivad wrote:Science isn't the religion, it's your mindless reverence for "Science" that's the religion.


Reverence? :?:

Dude, all I'm saying is science is the best tool we have to try and arrive at some truths about the universe. This is in no way some sort of zealous belief that Science is my lord and savior.

Get over yourself.
By Sivad
#14965790
All scientific results are in their nature provisional – they can be nothing else. Someone will come along, either the next day or the next decade, with further refinements, new methods, more nuanced ways of looking at old problems, and, quelle surprise, find that conclusions based on earlier results were simplistic, rough-hewn – even wrong.

Science: the religion that must not be questioned
It's time for the priesthood to be taken to task – and journalists aren't up to the job


The problem is that we (not the royal we, but the great unwashed lay public who won't know the difference between an eppendorf tube and an entrenching tool) are told, very often, and by people who ought to know better, that science is a one-way street of ever-advancing progress, a zero-sum game in which facts are accumulated and ignorance dispelled. In reality, the more we discover, the more we realise we don't know. Science is not so much about knowledge as doubt. Never in the field of human inquiry have so many known so little about so much.

As discussed in Dr McLain's article and the comments subjacent, scientific experiments don't end with a holy grail so much as an estimate of probability. For example, one might be able to accord a value to one's conclusion not of "yes" or "no" but "P<0.05", which means that the result has a less than one in 20 chance of being a fluke. That doesn't mean it's "right".

One thing that never gets emphasised enough in science, or in schools, or anywhere else, is that no matter how fancy-schmancy your statistical technique, the output is always a probability level (a P-value), the "significance" of which is left for you to judge – based on nothing more concrete or substantive than a feeling, based on the imponderables of personal or shared experience. Statistics, and therefore science, can only advise on probability – they cannot determine The Truth. And Truth, with a capital T, is forever just beyond one's grasp.

None of this gets through to the news pages. When pitching a science story to a news editor, a science correspondent soon learns that the answer that gets airtime is either "yes", or "no". Either the Voyager space probe has left the solar system, or it hasn't. To say that it might have done and attach statistical caveats is a guaranteed turn-off. Nobody ever got column inches by saying that Elvis has a 95% probability of having left the building.

Why do we demand such definitive truths of science, but are happy to have all other spheres of human activity wallow in mess and muddle?

I think it goes back to the mid-20th century, especially just after the second world war, when scientists – they were called "boffins" – gave us such miracles as radar, penicillin and plastics; jet propulsion, teflon, mass vaccination and transistors; the structure of DNA, lava lamps and the eye-level grill. They cracked the Enigma, and the atom. They were the original rocket scientists, people vouchsafed proverbially inaccessible knowledge. They were wizards, men like gods, who either had more than the regular human complement of leetle grey cells, or access to occult arcana denied to ordinary mortals. They were priests in vestments of white coats, tortoiseshell specs and pocket protectors. We didn't criticise them. We didn't engage with them – we bowed down before them.

How our faith was betrayed! (This is the great unwashed "we" again.) It wasn't long before we realised that science gave us pollution, radiation, agent orange and birth defects. And when we looked closely, "we" (oh, I give up) found that the scientists were not dispensing truths, but – gasp – arguing among themselves about the most fundamental aspects of science. They weren't priests after all, but frauds, fleecing us at some horrifically expensive bunco booth, while all the time covering up the fact that they couldn't even agree among themselves about the science they were peddling us like so much snake oil. And if they couldn't agree among themselves, why should good honest folks like you and me give them any credence?

And all this because scientists weren't honest enough, or quick enough, to say that science wasn't about Truth, handed down on tablets of stone from above, and even then, only to the elect; but Doubt, which anyone (even girls) could grasp, provided they had a modicum of wit and concentration. It wasn't about discoveries written in imperishable crystal, but about argument, debate, trial, and – very often – error.

[...]

Even the more highbrow effusions on science have yet to learn this lesson. TV programmes on science pursue a line that's often cringe-makingly reverential. Switch on any episode of Horizon, and the mood lighting, doom-laden music and Shakespearean voiceover convince you that you are entering the Houses of the Holy – somewhere where debate and dissent are not so much not permitted as inconceivable. If there are dissenting views, they aren't voiced by an interviewer, but by other scientists, and "we" (the great unwashed) can only sit back and watch uncomprehending as if the contenders are gods throwing thunderbolts at one another. If the presenters are scientists themselves, or have some scientific knowledge, be they Bill Oddie or David Attenborough, their discourse is one of monologue rather than argument, received wisdom rather than doubt.


Why is this? The answer, I think, is that those who are scientists, or who pretend to be scientists, cling to the mantle of a kind of religious authority. And as anyone who has tried to comment on religion has discovered, there is no such thing as criticism. There is only blasphemy.

Henry Gee is a senior editor of Nature.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/occ ... questioned



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By Rancid
#14965794
Sivad wrote:All scientific results are in their nature provisional – they can be nothing else. Someone will come along, either the next day or the next decade, with further refinements, new methods, more nuanced ways of looking at old problems, and, quelle surprise, find that conclusions based on earlier results were simplistic, rough-hewn – even wrong.


Correct.


The rest of what you posted basically confounds science and science journalism. There is a very valid criticism of how journalists report on science. That is a very true issue. However, to use that to then say that science itself is a problem is very dishonest. In fact, you are using the same bad journalism practices you are complaining about. :lol:
By Sivad
#14965796
Rancid wrote:The rest of what you posted basically confounds science and science journalism.


No it doesn't, the article points out that scientists themselves play into the mythology of science. The institution of science promotes the myth.

However, to use that to then say that science itself is a problem is very dishonest. In fact, you are using the same bad journalism practices you are complaining about. :lol:



Since I've emphatically spelled out that distinction between science, the institution of science, and the idea of science in the public imagination repeatedly in this thread, I'd say you're the one being dishonest. And this isn't even the first time you've tried to pull this crap, it's not even the first time in this thread. It's not even the first time on this page of this thread. :knife: :lol:
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