# Why don't "scientists" accept that not everything follows strict logic?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [January 2, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117 "2017-01-02T01:20:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/1 "2017-01-02T01:20:08Z")
[This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/2 "2017-01-02T01:29:12Z")
Yes, there just might be, just as there just might be a pink unicorn hiding at the bottom of my garden. Until I have some evidence, other than “the Bible/Koran says so”, I’m not going to believe in it.
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/3 "2017-01-02T01:29:51Z")
I can’t speak for scientists as a whole but in my experience medical doctors are not empiricists. If your condition does not fit in their little box of how they understand medicine works then they change the facts of your case to suit their schema.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/4 "2017-01-02T01:30:59Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
There might be, but without evidence, why treat such claims as any more reasonable than the million other evidence-free claims of strange forces and whatnot?
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### Author:  [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/5 "2017-01-02T01:36:02Z")
I think scientists would accept something that doesn’t follow logic, but trying to explain why that something exists without using logic would be worthless. There are a lot of things we can’t explain, consciousness being an example, that if we gave up trying to use logic to explain it all theories that did explain it would be equally valid and equally worthless.
Logic is the foundation of math which is the foundation of physics, so I don’t even know how you would begin to explain anything at a fundamental level without logic.
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### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/6 "2017-01-02T01:37:49Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
Lemme make sure I understand what the OP is asking… Are you asking why some people don’t believe in things that they cannot detect in any way?
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/7 "2017-01-02T01:46:45Z")
Because of the history of what happened with seemingly countless mysterious things\* that eventually were explained.
Lets have Tim Minchin tell it:
[QUOTE] If you wanna watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo. That show was so cool because every time there was a church with a ghoul or a ghost in a school they looked beneath the mask and what was inside? The f\*cking janitor or the dude who ran the waterslide. \*\*Because throughout history, every mystery, ever solved has turned out to be not magic.\*\* [/QUOTE]
- What is very important to remember here is that many that pointed at religious explanations told everybody, for centuries even, that a god or wizard was doing the mysterious things.
[http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whitek04.html](http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whitek04.html)
> [@](#):
>
> But these compromises were of little avail. In 1766 Father Sterzinger attacked the very groundwork of the whole diabolic theory. He was, of course, bitterly assailed, insulted, and hated; but the Church thought it best not to condemn him. More and more the “Prince of the Power of the Air” retreated before the lightning-rod of Franklin. The older Church, while clinging to the old theory, was finally obliged to confess the supremacy of Franklin’s theory practically; for his lightning-rod did what exorcisms, and holy water, and processions, and the _Agnus Dei_, and the ringing of church bells, and the rack, and the burning of witches, had failed to do. This was clearly seen, even by the poorest peasants in eastern France, when they observed that the grand spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which neither the sacredness of the place, nor the bells within it, nor the holy water and relics beneath it, could protect from frequent injuries by lightning, was once and for all protected by Franklin’s rod. Then came into the minds of multitudes the answer to the question which had so long exercised the leading theologians of Europe and America, namely, “Why should the Almighty strike his own consecrated temples, or suffer Satan to strike them?”
>
> Yet even this practical solution of the question was not received without opposition.
>
> In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially in Massachusetts, to Franklin’s rod. The Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of the Old South Church, published a sermon on the subject, and in the appendix expressed the opinion that the frequency of earthquakes may be due to the erection of “iron points invented by the sagacious Mr. Franklin.”
> [@](#):
>
> All was thus conformed to the medieval view; nothing was to be left which could remind one of the nineteenth century; the “ages of faith” were to be restored in their simplicity. Pope Leo XIII commended to the brethren the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas as their one great object of study, and works published at the monastery dwelt upon the miracles of St. Honorat as the most precious refutation of modern science.
>
> High in the cupola, above the altars and relics, were placed the bells. Sent by pious donors, they were solemnly baptized and consecrated in 1871, four bishops officiating, a multitude of the faithful being present from all parts of Europe, and the sponsors of the great tenor bell being the Bourbon claimant to the ducal throne of Parma and his duchess. The good bishop who baptized the bells consecrated them with a formula announcing their efficacy in driving away the “Prince of the Power of the Air” and the lightning and tempests he provokes.
>
> And then, above all, at the summit of the central spire, high above relics, altars, and bells, was placed-- **a lightning-rod!**
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/8 "2017-01-02T01:48:08Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
We live in a world that looks exactly like what you’d expect a natural, unmagical world to look like. All sorts of people believe in all sorts of varying supernatural things - often contradictory - but you would expect this, too, in a completely natural world as we understand how the human mind creates ideas about order and causation and such things.
You would expect in a world without ghosts or God or magical healing crystals that people would sincerely and firmly believe in ghosts or God or magical healing crystals, because that’s how have always worked, across cultures and time.
Therefore, reports of ghosts or God or magical healing crystals which cannot actually be objectively observed - that only are reported through subjective experience, _exactly as you would expect them to be in a world where these things don’t exist_ is consistent with a world in which they do not exist.
So if you want to accept that these things exist, you need evidence beyond the subjective experiences reported by individuals that, experiences that you know will exist in a world in which the actual phoenomina they believe in do not exist. This is what the scientific method does - it strives to eliminate our subjective biases and perceptions about the world and systematically evaluate the objective existence of these things to see what’s actually real, not just what we want to believe is real.
Given how much opportunity people have had to demonstrate these things in an objective way, and given how much they have been unable to do so, what we see in the world is exactly what you would expect of a world in which these magical forces or entities do not exist.
Since we know the human mind will see magic where none exists, and so it is entirely reasonable to discount claims of magic with no corroborating evidence. Adding unconfirmed magic to our worldview would do nothing but distort our understanding of the world and lead us to false conclusions, so accepting that magic exists based on what people want to believe in would be harmful to our understanding and models of how the world works. It’s not only untruthful but would hurt any advancements we could make for ourselves that relied on understanding the world.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/9 "2017-01-02T01:50:58Z")
Discovering true things is really, really, really hard.
As such, scientists have developed a set of tools that allow them to avoid the numerous pitfalls associated with the search for knowledge. Most of these pitfalls are associated with the fallibility of the human brain, which evolved to hunt animals on the savanna and not to figure out the nature of quarks.
No one has yet figured out an alternative to materialism and evidence-based reasoning that actually works, in the sense that you can figure out physical laws and then build things that take them into account. No one has turned Yogic levitation into an alternative to aircraft, or hired psychokinetic longshoremen for loading ships. If these things were useful, then they would have evidence behind them–but they don’t.
Most scientists don’t spend any time or brainpower arguing against the supernatural. It’s simply outside their purview. If there were something there, it would be amenable to scientific tools and would attract attention.
Some people think that scientists are limiting themselves by their methods. This claim is untrue, as shown by the history of science–the laws of the universe are much more elegant, wondrous, and just plain _weird_ than any supernatural claim I’ve seen. Their tools are actually designed to admit as much as possible, and in part designed to prevent scientists from unintentionally limiting themselves. We wouldn’t have quantum mechanics, for example, if science required that it matched human intuition. Instead it just has to be mathematically consistent and fit the evidence.
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### Author:  [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/10 "2017-01-02T01:52:16Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
because science accepts “we haven’t figured it out yet” as an answer, and doesn’t attempt to force “because God did it” into the discussion just to suit some superstitious people.
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/11 "2017-01-02T02:00:37Z")
I don’t know what you mean by “logic”.
Scientists are not philosophically opposed to WAGs, as long as there is 1) some evidence supporting the WAG and 2) a reasonable causal mechanism can be proposed. It also helps if it’s a relatively parsimonious explanation.
I’ve never met a scientist who doesn’t feel comfortable saying “I don’t know”. But you’re right. Real scientists aren’t going to attribute a mystery to voodoo. That’s like a boxer like throwing in the towel before he even steps into the ring. A scientist who jumps to voodoo is basically saying they can’t be arsed to shave away all the other possible explanations–all eleventy-billion of them. That’s a lazy scientist.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/12 "2017-01-02T02:06:49Z")
You need to distinguish between the different reasons why you believe something.
Sometimes it’s based on opinion. I believe _Casablanca_ is the greatest movie ever made. And that’s true. But it’s only true for me. Just because I believe _Casablanca_ is the greatest movie ever made doesn’t mean you’re wrong if you believe _Star Wars_ is the greatest movie ever made. Opinions are personal to each individual.
Sometimes a belief is based on evidence. In this case, the person is saying the belief is universal - it’s true for everyone, even those who don’t agree with it. In order to support this universal truth, they offer evidence. They say that anyone can examine the evidence that supports the truth of the belief and verify its truth for themselves if they wish. These kind of beliefs are the basis of science.
And sometimes a belief is based on faith. Faith-based beliefs fall in between the other two cases. They’re not supported by verifiable evidence. But people who have these beliefs tend to regard them as universal truths.
If one person believes on the basis of faith that Yahweh created the world and another person believes on the basis of faith that Zeus created the world, how do you decide which of their beliefs is right?
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### Author:  [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/13 "2017-01-02T02:09:24Z")
Thanks for the great answers.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/14 "2017-01-02T02:25:43Z")
Just to be clear, most “evolutionists” do believe in God. At least in the US. That is, there are a lot more Americans who accept evolution than who are atheists.
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/15 "2017-01-02T02:28:48Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
I certainly do not insist _that._
> [@](#):
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
Sure, why not? Well, I don’t expect it’s the cause of “events in general” unless you live in a fictional world and that strange voodoo is the writers’ room. But yeah, there are unknown and unseen causes for lots of things. Ask a physicist to explain gravity sometime.
That does not mean that the universe is not strictly logical in fact.
The title of the OP talks about “logic,” then the text talks about the scientific method in one paragraph, and the existence of unknown forces in the net. These are three different things.
Now, if **UrbanRedneck** wishes to assert that the universe is illogical and unknowable because it’s being directed by the multiple intelligences of a television series’s writers’ room; I think that’s an interesting proposition, but a completely ludicrous objection to actual useful bits of science, like cellular biology, actinide chemistry, and meteorology, which actually _work._
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/16 "2017-01-02T02:38:12Z")
To elaborate: The scientific method is about someone _proving_ things, not about things \*being. \*String theory is not proven, but it might be a decent approximation of reality. The fact that we can’t empirically demonstrate it doesn’t mean it’s definitely false.
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### Author:  [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/17 "2017-01-02T02:42:15Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
There might be some strange, unaccountable force responsible for relieving my headache yesterday. That, or it might be the aspirin. I’m not going to discount the possibility of the former, but given that it is, well, _unaccountable_, how would we ever establish that that was the case? And if we’re going to allow for flights of fancy like that, what _can_ we know at all? After all, the evidence points to Vioxx causing heart damage, but how do we know that the Vioxx caused it? It could have been the whim of a capricious deity, out to sink the product and prevent us from getting a better medicine. How do we know that next time we step into our car, it won’t simply burst into flames, because of some strange, unaccountable force? The answer: we don’t. We _don’t_ know that.
But given that there are clear lines of empirical evidence, and given that empiricism _works_, there is no reason to assume that such unaccountable forces exist until such time as there is good evidence for their existence. Which is a bit of a problem, given that they are, by definition, “unaccountable”, and thus immune to such accounts as empiricism. You’ve essentially defined a concept which is useless. Why bother with it?
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### Author:  [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/18 "2017-01-02T02:51:27Z")
> [@jz78817](#):
>
> because science accepts “we haven’t figured it out yet” as an answer, and doesn’t attempt to force “because God did it” into the discussion just to suit some superstitious people.
This is what I came to say. I guess being the smartest creatures on this planet tends to make us arrogant. So if we ever encounter anything that defies our comprehension, we attribute it to God(s) or magic. Because, of course that’s the only other possible explanation.
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/19 "2017-01-02T02:53:33Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
Scientists accept that something _might_ be inexplicable according to science, but the post itself reveals what you obviously fail to understand about scientific method. In actuality, scientists accept all along that their science, their observations, stop short of 100% certainty. What science says is that this is what we have observed. “We had variable X and reaction Y – this is what we observed.”
The problem that conservatives such as yourself have is that you want to cherry pick the science that you want to accept. On one hand, you might accept that smoking increase the risk of cancer, and yet people such as yourself refuse to acknowledge global warming science despite the fact that they are both products of the scientific method.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2017, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/20 "2017-01-02T02:56:07Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871) on “Mysterious Happenings” got me thinking about the many atheists and evolutionists and others who have argued against the concepts of God and the supernatural. They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification.
>
> Why cant they accept that their just MIGHT be some strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events?
Please stop using a computer to ask questions like this. You’re making all the little electrons cry.
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