# Why don't "scientists" accept that not everything follows strict logic? **URL:** \ **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:** 2
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/21 "2017-01-02T03:01:04Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > [URL=“[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814871)”] > 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? Without evidence, why should they? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/22 "2017-01-02T03:09:41Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > 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. I’d say the claim is true–and that it’s a feature, not a bug. Science is the process of elimination. Hypotheses are tested, and discarded when they fail. That means that each hypothesis must be falsifiable. And ideas that aren’t are automatically excluded, which makes homing in on the best hypothesis much easier. Of course it’s possible that some non-falsifiable ideas are true, but such ideas are unprovable by definition and so must be accepted or denied based on faith. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/23 "2017-01-02T03:12:27Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Please stop using a computer to ask questions like this. You’re making all the little electrons cry. Bingo! “I accept the science that created all the electronic and modern shit that I use without thinking about it – but man-made global warming theory is a total hoax.” ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/24 "2017-01-02T03:17:04Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > 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. Indeed. And let’s not forget that the “Magic/God did it” explanation has a batting average of exactly 0. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/25 "2017-01-02T03:37:51Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > 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? Which “strange, unaccountable force” would you suggest that scientists accept. And why? ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/26 "2017-01-02T03:44:15Z")
Is the question “why don’t scientists accept nonscience?” ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/27 "2017-01-02T03:46:50Z")
“…strange, unaccountable force, voodoo, power of God, time travel vortex, or whatever out there…” is what shamans and charlatins have used to dictate arbitary commandments and dominate their followers for millenia. When the “natural philosophers” of the Enlightenment era started looking deeper into nature to find the order that would point to the true plan of the Christian god, what they actually found was a set of consistent mechanisms by which the world works without any need for supernatural intervention or other “voodoo”, and we’ve since used scientific principles to predict and control aspects of our world with progressive accuracy and fidelity, while the need for a deity to explain particular phenomena such as weather or the movement of the planets keeps retreating into the ever more tiny gaps in our knowledge. The world, in the view of scientists and other rationale people, is not some part mechanics, part magic; the categories are just the well characterized, the hypothesized but unverified, and the unknown but presumably explicable. To accept otherwise and not attempt to shine the light of reason onto the unknown is intellectually lazy and ethically unconscionable. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Please stop using a computer to ask questions like this. You’re making all the little electrons cry. This is very silly. Of course elections don’t cry; they spit tiny photons at each other like second graders shooting spitballs while the teacher is out of the room. QED, electrons are nature’s unruly children. Neutrons, on the other hand, cry themselves to oblivion because no one is attracted to them. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/28 "2017-01-02T03:54:11Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > …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 is, and they do. When we get sick, it’s often caused by myriad invisible monstrous creatures - so tiny that we can’t even see them, but they crawling all over us, in our food and drinking water! Or how about Relativity and Quantum Mechanics - a whole lot more bizarre than anything you’ll find under “Mysterious Happenings”. The entire continents that we live on are moving, and the earth is so old that one they were joined up! The _real_ world is very much stranger than the superstitious inventions of religions, magic and ghosts, which are constrained by the rather limited human imagination. The distinction you’re looking for is not “strange” vs “not strange”, it is “stuff for which there is evidence”, and “bullshit that people just made up”. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/29 "2017-01-02T04:19:41Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Indeed. And let’s not forget that the “Magic/God did it” explanation has a batting average of exactly 0. Wait … that can’t be true … is it … damn … I think it is true … dammit … I knew it was bad but I didn’t realize it was that bad … that’s not a very good batting average … how does the Hindu faith fare … that’s wickets per ha’inning I think … Science doesn’t have a perfect batting average, now does it? … dinosaur DNA in Baltic Amber (kook-coo kook-coo kook-coo) … like that worked out … I’m not sure the logical fallacy I’ve committed above, but that’s the best I got here … I don’t have to look at my own errors while I’m pointing out yours … neat trick … Science has it’s place, and I think most any scientist would enjoy a visit to an art museum … some things are not scientific … ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/30 "2017-01-02T04:24:12Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Science has it’s place, and I think most any scientist would enjoy a visit to an art museum … some things are not scientific … I will let the great late Professor Richard Feynman reply to that: > **[Ode to a Flower: Richard Feynman’s Famous Monologue on Knowledge and Mystery,...](https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/01/01/ode-to-a-flower-richard-feynman/)** > > “The science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower.” > [@](#): > > ``` > I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe… > > I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? **All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.** > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/31 "2017-01-02T04:38:13Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > They insist that everything must follow the scientific method which requires strict guidelines for verification. I’m sure scientists have just as many opinions and faith-based beliefs as anyone else. But they don’t call those beliefs science. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/32 "2017-01-02T04:38:32Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I’d say the claim is true–and that it’s a feature, not a bug. Let me clarify what I meant– A common complaint about scientists (from pseudoscience types) is that they lack imagination, and that if they would just open their minds they would find all sorts of crazy stuff. But the tools of science don’t limit imagination in this way, as evidenced by all the counterintuitive and strange things that we know about the universe. There is a filter, and it works as you say, by rejecting hypothesis that don’t fit the available evidence. My point is just that this filter isn’t so aggressive that it catches things it shouldn’t. On the contrary, it’s usually the pseudoscientists that reject new ideas on the basis that they don’t fit their preconceived notions. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/33 "2017-01-02T05:13:55Z")
What are “scientists”? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/34 "2017-01-02T05:52:40Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Science has it’s place, and I think most any scientist would enjoy a visit to an art museum … some things are not scientific … I can’t make heads or tails of the rest of your post, but there are definite neurophysical reasons why we appreciate art, and why certain types of visual presentations are appealing. I could write a monologue-length post on the topic, but Nobel laureate and world renowned neuroscientist and psychistrist (and art enthusiast) Eric Kandel has written an excellent book on the topic: [_Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures_](https://www.amazon.com/Reductionism-Art-Brain-Science-Bridging/dp/0231179626/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=8PZ99NPXAQA5TT2Q0F6Y). Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/35 "2017-01-02T05:57:38Z")
For thousands of years (yes, thousands - it’s not hyperbole) your average Western doctor was more likely to harm you than to help you. Your average person would have been safer to avoid a doctor and let his own body do its best, than to see a doctor and let them use their “learned techniques” on them. Once they started to use the scientific method, suddenly everything went like this: [![](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/vdqvmnxl4idlu51/Life_Expect_Long.gif?dl=0) ](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/vdqvmnxl4idlu51/Life_Expect_Long.gif?dl=0) We have proved that all of the cognitive biases are real things. We can demonstrate that the human mind is fallible, invents information, misinterprets information, etc. And the more we have removed the ability for the human mind to influence how we live, how we build things, and how we run things, the better life has become for mankind and the more consistent a view of the world we have achieved. The things which science believes are real, are believed to be real because a) no one can disprove them, and b) every observation of them is consistent with what is predicted. If, say, near death experiences were actually spiritually meaningful, then every person who had a near death experience would come out of it with consistent information about spirituality. Instead, we get people who see aliens, sometimes. We get people who see psychedelic colors, sometimes. We get people who see snippets of their life history, sometimes. Of times that people come back with a ‘spiritual’ revelation, it’s Christian in tone, when it’s a Christian, Buddhist in tone for Buddhists, and (presumably) Scientology related for Scientologists. Either the spirit world includes psychedelia, multiple religions (which, I will note, directly conflicts with the Christian religion), and aliens, or these people are just experiencing a bunch of random stuff that’s dreamed up by their brain, while things are being turned on and off haphazardly. Christianity, by its refusal to accept the provenance of other gods is, in particular, boned by any attempt to say that spiritual matters are distinctly monotheistic. The sum total of spiritual experiences, across the world, and across history, are distinctly polytheistic (and, since the concept of aliens has come into being, has come to include aliens). The inconsistency of visions and their contents, even if it doesn’t disprove spirituality (though, I would argue that it does), certainly disproves Christianity or any other religion which denies the possibility of other religions also being correct. Consistency is required as much by these absolutist religions as it is by scientists. But then let’s say that near death experiences, vision quests, etc. are all possible evidence of spirits. Well that needs to be consistent with all the other things we can observe. Are people who pay attention to spirits and work to make the spirits happy more blessed in their lives? Well, no. Atheists are generally happier, more long lived, less likely to murder others, make a better income, etc. Are people who are spiritual better at predicting things, like where water is underground or what sort of person someone is? No, their water-finding skills have been disproven, and they will give completely different readings for a person based on how you dress them up. Can they read minds or move objects? No, not any more than a trained magician of cold reading or slight of hand. And the techniques which would flummox a trained magician also flummox these spiritualists. Consider that God lives on top of Mt Sinai. Except that he doesn’t. He lives in the clouds. Except that he doesn’t. He lives just outside the heliosphere. Except that he doesn’t. He lives just outside the Big Bang. There’s thousands of silly things that you would laugh about, that people have believed over the millenia, which would fall into the realm of the spiritual. **You** don’t believe them, because you live in modern day and are aware of things like the Spherical Earth, the lack of sea monsters, the lack of giant one-eyed men, etc. Is it more likely that all these nonsensical ideas went away because they were nonsense or because, of all the nonsense out there, they were the ones which were most easily disproved? Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism), for example, has been proven to have been lying about the translation of some Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. So should we discount everything he has said, on the basis that he’s a liar, or just the parts that we can easily prove are fictional? Why would we think he had special knowledge when there’s really nothing to back anything else that he said and, of the things we can verify, none of it pans out? Like I said, we know that humans are fallible. As of yet, for every spiritual matter that we have been able to investigate and explain, the answer was never spiritual. Lightning comes about due to electrical differences between the Earth and the sky, not because Thor was in a bad mood. The world did not end in 2012, as prophesied by the Ancient Mayans. Breaking a mirror does not cause bad luck, nor walking under a ladder. People who suffer seizures and who have visions during these seizures aren’t prophets, they’re epileptic. Based on the track record of the last two centuries, it’s a safe bet that everything mysterious has a mundane, scientific explanation. So far, everything that we have been able to investigate has turned out so. Quantum randomness is, as yet, the only thing we have discovered in the universe which is not wholly explainable, and even it follows a probability distribution and other laws, which we can quantify with math. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/36 "2017-01-02T06:04:40Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > 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 there is no reason to believe it, and in the past, whenever some charlatan would say something was certainly nothing more than the wrath of some idiot god, it turned out to be a microbe or maybe friction starting a fire or some such. Every single time with no exception. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/37 "2017-01-02T06:13:02Z")
> [@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. Many scientists happen to also be deists or agnostics of some description. They also accept that there’s little point in speculating about the unprovable, and certainly none about interjecting it into their work which is _predicated_ upon hard proof. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/38 "2017-01-02T06:13:26Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > And let’s not forget that the “Magic/God did it” explanation has a batting average of exactly 0. Yeah, but he’s got a great glove so we’re gonna keep him around for a bit and see if the hitting comes around. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/39 "2017-01-02T07:27:25Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > 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 that is not an answer or even a working hypothesis, it’s merely the occasion for new questions. It’s like marking a map “Here be dragons” - you wouldn’t actually want to rely on it to get you anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117/40 "2017-01-02T07:29:23Z")
Lots of people above will give explanations of the scientific method and what science does and does not do. I want to take a slightly different, more hands on tack with respect to the existence of miracles and super natural phenomena. [Per this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/)there are now approximately 2 billion smartphone users on earth. 2 billion people with reasonably high resolution video & camera picture taking capabilities on or near their persons most of their waking hours. How many things that “science” said was impossible or extremely unlikely have been proven to exist by this massive 2 billion strong army of recording capability? Almost one half of adult humanity has the power to empirically demonstrate “supernatural” miracles in action. We don’t have t just take their word for it. So relative to the number of claimed miracles, cryptobeasts, aliens etc. we should have a virtual torrent of proof rolling in. But we don’t. If anything we have fewer claims as people claiming supernatural phenomena these days have to explain why they have no picture or video to back up their extraordinary claims. 2 BILLION video cameras rolling around in people’s hands and nothing supernatural has been shown to exist. Tell me why. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-scientists-accept-that-not-everything-follows-strict-logic/776117.md?page=3)