Why does the OP confuse atheists and scientists? Other than not being either one himself, quite evidently.
I see two different complaints here … and I sympathize with both of them!
I think some facts can be treated as probably true without “strict verification.” For example, I regard certain politicians as criminals despite that no jury has pronounced them guilty of a felony.
As for “unaccountable forces” or “time travel” I, for one, certainly do not rule such out. I won’t say more — let’s not get my new year at the Dope off to a fierier start than necessary.
Disclaimer: I am not a scientist … but I am a “scientist,” once having the job title Senior Computer Scientist. (Perhaps a euphemism for “old hacker” but if I was an old hacker 25 years ago, what am I now? :eek: )
I would venture to guess that he’s taking the view that science is the ‘religion’ of atheists.
More than 40 posts and no link to this? For shame!
Some posts in this thread (and this one in particular, since it uses the term “two cultures” reminds me of a recent post by Jerry Coyne, in particular this quote, which I agree with:
*
The upshot: as I always maintain, scientists who read have a much more balanced selection, at least with respect to the Two Cultures, than do nonscientists. In other words, scientists know a lot more about the products of the humanities than scholars of the humanities know about the products of science.*
Tommy Westphall would like a word with you.
“As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life—so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.”
—Matt Cartmill
You could actually objectively prove that Casablanca is the “greatest movie ever made”…if you could agree a rigorous set of criteria and method of analysis.
To be fair, there is a third category of “stuff for which we have not yet found evidence”. The problem is that certain people insist that everything in the “bullshit that people just made up” category belongs in the third category, when in reality 99% of everything currently filed under “stuff for which we have not yet found evidence” belongs in the “bullshit” category. Scientists are working to sift out the remaining 1%.
As always, there’s an XKCD for that.
The way I see it, saying “not everything follows strict logic” is a lazy, closed-minded way of looking at the universe. You are dismissing the possibility that everything can be explained by logic. And by dismissing the possibility, you don’t even try to explain the universe through logic. If Newton thought the movement of the planets were ineffable, he wouldn’t have come up with Newton’s Laws or calculus.
Never go casino gambling with a mathematician …
To a very large degree science does accept that there are strange, unaccounted forces or whatever out there that just might be the cause for events. It does not accept that they are necessarily unaccountable.
There no doubt are forces at work in this universe that we do not understand and that science does not account for … call one of them “magic”, the M force. The M force has impacts on matter and the forces that we already know about? Then science is devoted to understanding the nature of that M force and being able to predict what it does in different circumstances.
Sure, there may be things that are unknowable, even theoretically, and our ignorance will always exceed our knowledge, but science’s mission, reason to exist, is the ongoing effort to try to understand and predict all that is understandable and predictable, even if in the process we only come to grips with the fact that there is even more that we have to be ignorant about than we had previously realized.
The gravitational acceleration on earth is approximately 9.80665m/s^2. This is demonstrably accurate, to a high degree of certainty. There will never be a time where the gravitational acceleration on earth is 3m/s^2, or 15m/s^2. Like it or not, while science doesn’t have a perfect batting average, it consistently improves upon itself, becoming more and more accurate when it comes to describing the world. Every single aspect of our modern lives, from the computer you are reading this on to the building you’re standing in to the car you use to drive to work.
Meanwhile, can you name a single case where “God did it” or “it’s magic” was the correct answer to anything? In every single case we’ve applied it, from lightning to volcanoes to the source of diseases to the origin of the earth to the origin of the moon to why the sun moves the way it does to why the tides go in and out to fucking magnets, the answer has either been wrong or unproven. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s possible to prove that something was caused by something else outside of the universe, or what that would even mean.
The fact that you would compare the two indicates to me that you don’t really understand either very well.
Our subjective experience of certain things? Our personal preferences? Well… why not? Our emotions and memories and thoughts are essentially chemical processes within our brains. We’re learning more and more through psychology how to influence it, and there’s a great deal to be learned about why certain bits of art influence us the way they do.
But that’s not what the OP is talking about. Rather, he’s talking about physical effects from “unaccountable forces” - voodoo, gods, magic, et cetera. Our subjective enjoyment or experience is an entirely different category.
To my mind, the real problem with accepting magic, voodoo, gods, etc., as an explanation is that it puts an end to inquiry.
If society asks, for example, what causes this illness? And, the answer comes back, well, according to this infallible book, it’s God’s punishment for evil-doing, what have we gained? What have we learned? Has it helped find the cure?
By accepting gods or the supernatural, we put an end to learning. What problems should we answer with that explanation? Urbanredneck, bad spirits really were the explanation to some diseases, right? Should we just have accepted that? Why should disease be subject to scientific inquiry and not other claims? Where would you draw the line?
What problems do you think should be subject to the scientific method and what problems should we satisfy with the answer “unknowable” or “God did it” or something similar? Why would you put some questions in one column and some in the other?
I’m curious as to what the OP does for a living.
First of all, some sorting needs to be done. Not everyone who “argue(s) against the concepts of God and the supernatural” are trained scientists and well-reasoned atheists. Many of the people who go on the attack against religious belief, are no more rational about that, than the most fanatical true believers are. So don’t blame “science” or “the scientific method” for every instance where someone said rude things about religions.
As has been intimated to some extent already, we don’t use the scientific method because we are opposed to the idea of gods and magic, we use it because it has proven to be practical and reliable. Amusingly, science cannot be used to disprove all existence of magic, for the simple reason that magic is defined as “supernatural” in the strict sense of the word.
What Supernatural means, is “does not obey Natural Law.” and what Natural means in this very old sense, is what we nowadays refer to as The Real World.
Science can’t prove that magic can’t exist, only that everything seen so far, can be explained otherwise.
But it is equally true for the exact same reason, that no one can prove the EXISTENCE of magic or gods, either. BECAUSE THEY ARE SUPERNATURAL.
Which brings us back to the simplest answer for this thread question, which is something like
“Because we can USE answers derived from application of the Scientific Method, and we CAN’T use answers derived from belief in unknown and unknowable forces or beings.”
Former “science” teacher.
From here.
A family physician isn’t really a scientist.
That’s unsettling. I wonder if any of the science test answers were “God did it.”
Anyone who teaches should respect the desire to learn, I would hope, instead of lamenting a lack of blind faith.
Your science is not capable of measuring my woo.
And by the same token, if your medicine won’t recognize my belief as to what ails me, then your medicine is at fault. :mad:
While we’re on the subject, why don’t engineers take my ideas around magical invisible dragons that hold up large structures into account when they build bridges? They’re so closed minded.
To a certain extent that’s a good thing; there’s a limit to how much I want my GP experimenting on me.