On September 14 2009 10:38 Motiva wrote: That gravity is, is a fact
How, Why, Where, and all the details beyond the observable facts of gravity are very much theories, and are very much -what gravity is-... This is just how science works, it's really pathetic that this isn't understood and taught in High Schools.
No, it's not. You can observe that all matter moves in such a manner that it seems there is an attraction, but saying that there is in fact an attraction is already theorizing. Gravity is very much a theory.
Mary is a physicist whose whole career has been guided by Newtonian mechanics. Now comes Quantum mechanics to challenge her whole world view -- what Thomas Kuhn calls a revolution in science. Mary is nearing retirement. If she accepts the new paradigm -- Quantum mechanics -- her life's work has been falsified, superseded, or rendered obsolete. Psychologically, she faces the same issues as John. She refuses to believe the new theory, even if it's true, because believing it would be too damaging to her... what? Self? I don't know... but you get the point.
what garbage Classical physics still exists, and still describes our daily interactions as well as ever. QM is just another wrinkle in the fabric
The existance of QM doesnt somehow make classical physics wrong on a large scale.
True. Lack of unification doesn't mean that either classical mechanics or quantum mechanics invalidates the other... they are both useful for different types of situations.
Mary is a physicist whose whole career has been guided by Newtonian mechanics. Now comes Quantum mechanics to challenge her whole world view -- what Thomas Kuhn calls a revolution in science. Mary is nearing retirement. If she accepts the new paradigm -- Quantum mechanics -- her life's work has been falsified, superseded, or rendered obsolete. Psychologically, she faces the same issues as John. She refuses to believe the new theory, even if it's true, because believing it would be too damaging to her... what? Self? I don't know... but you get the point.
what garbage Classical physics still exists, and still describes our daily interactions as well as ever. QM is just another wrinkle in the fabric
The existance of QM doesnt somehow make classical physics wrong on a large scale.
True. Lack of unification doesn't mean that either classical mechanics or quantum mechanics invalidates the other... they are both useful for different types of situations.
If Mary thinks he whole life works has been for nothing then she truly didn't understand what she was working for her whole life. This is just how science works and it's pathetic that the worldview most people adapt is that of Mary. Mary in reality should rejoice and revel to have been part of such a great time in history, and in awe of the progression her field and related fields will make in the lifetime following hers. but this is just me, and in my opinion a scientists greatest moment in his life should be when his field progresses.
but even so, classical physics wasn't made obsolete by QM, if anything It just opens new doors and possibilities for the discovery of the true holy grail of physics. A Theory of Everything.
On September 14 2009 10:09 Zinfandel wrote: I did not read the article. Nevertheless, often people do not wish to have their most cherished beliefs challenged (all of us are like this). It's not just that dogmatic Christians refuse to consider the theory of evolution objectively, it is that they do not want to challenge the beliefs that guide their lives. Consider two analogous cases.
John was raised Catholic, and all his life he has lived by the teachings of Christ. He believes in God, that God is good, and that we ought to follow the Ten Commandments because if he doesn't he'll go to hell. So, John lives his life according to these beliefs. Darwin comes along and challenges the foundation of Christianity: maybe God didn't create the world, maybe we were evolved from the same ancestral organism. If this were true, it would mean John's whole life would've been lived under false beliefs. Psychologically: it's better to believe a lie than to feel like your whole life was lived for a lie.
Mary is a physicist whose whole career has been guided by Newtonian mechanics. Now comes Quantum mechanics to challenge her whole world view -- what Thomas Kuhn calls a revolution in science. Mary is nearing retirement. If she accepts the new paradigm -- Quantum mechanics -- her life's work has been falsified, superseded, or rendered obsolete. Psychologically, she faces the same issues as John. She refuses to believe the new theory, even if it's true, because believing it would be too damaging to her... what? Self? I don't know... but you get the point.
You are right that many different kinds of people face this sort of conundrum, but as others have pointed out your second example is not very good.
Classical mechanics is not a belief, it is a way of describing and attempting to predict interactions. It is useful for some things, and less useful for others. Rarely, if ever, will you find a situation where a field in science is completely invalidated. Almost everything is build on top of previous ideas. Her whole life may have been in vain because, apparently, if she is thusly affected, she has failed to become a decent scientist. Further, if I understand it correctly, quantum mechanics is useless for predicting macroscopic phenomena - perhaps a better example would be general relativity.
Also, I think it was Sadist who said they are both cowards, and I agree. This sort of behavior, while understandable and probably exhibited by many of us, should be something we try to eradicate.
(Incidentally, AFAIK NASA still uses newtonian physics for engineering and mission planning and such rather than the newer, more "correct" general relativity. General relativity and non-relativistic gravity both seem to fail on a very large scale, which has brought about suspicion of the existence of dark matter (which could salvage the theories)- though we may just have gotten everything completely wrong.)
Even if you believe in intelligent design, you really can't dispute that evolution happens. Mutations happen, and a crappy mutation gets you killed. Given these two premises (which have been proven experimentally many times over), only good mutations survive - there's nothing to do with religion there.
But just because evolution happens doesn't necessarily mean that it's the source of the plethora of species. One analogy I heard went something like this: your family owns a boat and your dad tells you he built it. As you grow up, you learn about professional boat builders and so on, and maybe you can build your own boat. Does that mean your dad didn't build the original boat? No.. it's possible he bought it from somewhere, or other people helped him build it, but it's still possible he built it. So just because evolution occurs all the time, doesn't rule out the possibility of an intelligent designer. It might be an alternate explanation, or the truth might lie somewhere in between, but the existence of evolution doesn't disprove the possibility of intelligent design.
So my view on the education point is that it's completely ridiculous not to teach evolution. It's undeniable that it occurs. Whether you think it explains the different species today is a completely separate matter.
On September 14 2009 03:12 Slaughter wrote: How is it at 40% that seems way to high, most Christians believe in evolution so it can't be that high of retards.
Your sources?
never met a single person in my church or school who didnt believe in evolution
Alright, I concede that I lack detailed knowledge about the relation between Newtonian and Quantum mechanics. As such, I concede that my example was probably not the best to illustrate my point. Nevertheless, it was just an example to illustrate a larger point. The point being a normative one. I think we ought to empathize with those who hold different views from ours (as a first step; we stop empathizing and start restraining them when they threaten to physically harm others) -- here I'm denouncing the aggressive debates (that degenerate into ad hominem flame wars) between fundamentalist Christians and dogmatic (yes, dogmatic) atheists.
I'm here advocating something like a global agnosticism. Yes, evolution is the best theory that we presently have to explain the origin of species (all species) on Earth. Yes, there are very many rational arguments against the existence of a benevolent God. Yet we must look at the status of our knowledge from a historical perspective. Each era has believed themselves to be in possession of The Final Truth. And each era has been wrong. Personally I think evolution is right and I'm agnostic about the existence of God. But, I am not intolerant or hateful towards anyone who holds a view different from mine because I understand that (a) we are always more ignorant of so much more than we know, (b) other people are just trying to make sense of this chaotic universe just as I am, (c) I can hammer out the clearest logical arguments to demonstrate the existence or nonexistence of God, and atheists and believers might still not be persuaded because more often than not we are not persuaded by reason alone.
And, I think the main reason why a debate about God cannot get off the ground is something Hume mentions: we cannot prove an empirical fact (i.e., whether or not something exists in the world) by reason (logical argumentation) alone. And since we can't empirically investigate the existence of God, we cannot show that God exists.
My religious beliefs support evolution, and science, in fact, I believe if some religion incites anyone to get into the way of science it is wrong, the purpose of religions are to teach people to pay evil with good, charity, and etc...
We should use religion to build a better world, not to let it create a wall between us and it.
On September 14 2009 10:50 armed_ wrote: Gravity is very much a theory.
EXACTLY THE SAME STATEMENT
hmmm where do i begin? Should I begin by randomly selecting two statements from our few statements and then saying they're the same statement when they're not? That's what you did. Oh, I'll put it in caps too!
Actually, Lets just striaghten this out for your poor reading skills.
1) I said: "The fact that gravity exists is a fact You Said: You can observe that all matter moves in such a manner that it seems there is an attraction"
You seem to have a problem with me saying that something exists that we know exists and calling that knowledge fact. I don't see a problem with this, This is just semantical bullshit and is totally irrelevant to the point that we agree that the workings of gravity are currently theoretical...
2) I said: "How, Why, Where, and all the details beyond the observable facts of gravity are very much theories, and are very much -what gravity is-" You said: "Gravity is very much a theory"
Looks pretty similar to me, stop trolling me.
That there is something which we humans call gravity, and it seems to be present in nature, is a fact......... I'm trying very hard to be nice, and if i'm missing something please don't use caps.
i have had a bias towards science ever since i learned about the Galileo incident now whenever some type of religion comes in to blemish science's credibility with religious talk, i can't take them seriously, because religious beliefs went against actual fact in the past that is also how i view the whole evolution ordeal "more religious talk trying to blemish scientific theory"
On September 14 2009 12:55 Motiva wrote: You seem to have a problem with me saying that something exists that we know exists and calling that knowledge fact. I don't see a problem with this, This is just semantical bullshit
It's not semantics, there's a very clear, exact boundary between factual observations and theories and you have it in the wrong place.
On September 14 2009 12:55 Motiva wrote: You seem to have a problem with me saying that something exists that we know exists and calling that knowledge fact. I don't see a problem with this, This is just semantical bullshit
It's not semantics, there's a very clear, exact boundary between factual observations and theories and you have it in the wrong place.
Explain please.
rofl sorry in a HoN game atm... anyway to make this really short... We both totally agree that gravity is a theory.
My statement doesn't say that gravity is a fact. It says that it is a that there is a phenomena in nature that occurs that we as humans call gravity. If our theory of gravity is wrong, the name of gravity doesn't change, the theory does.
Darwin made some good observations that have been extrapolated beyond his original discoveries. I'm a religious person, a Mormon, and have no problem with the idea of evolution.
Do I believe that God created the world? Yes. I think lots of religious people need to read the bible in a more open minded way and take time to actually think about what they read. To create is not to magically make something of nothing. To create is to organize existing elements in a beautiful, functional way. For every product, there is a designer that created it. For every painting, a painter, etc. I think this principle applies to natural and spiritual things like it does to synthetic man-made creations.
Now, some people took Darwin's original observations and transformed those into what I consider to be incorrect ideas. One example would be the Progressive movement. This movement holds that there are no eternal standards of right and wrong, but that like Darwin's theory of evolution, moral standards change over time as we learn more about the world around us. I don't want to lengthen this wall of text talking more about this, but I just share this to point out that not all religious people are overly concerned about the details of the creation of the planet and mankind. Some object to the extrapolations based on Darwin's work like Progressivism that reject what they believe are inspired, eternal principles.
I think that too often, people worry about the details of how the HOW and the WHY fit together. If you believe in God, you need to realize that we won't have all the answers in this life. We have enough to get by, but in general we need to walk by faith. Science worries about the HOW, religion worries about WHY. They don't contradict each other, they just answer different questions.
On September 14 2009 10:09 Zinfandel wrote: I did not read the article. Nevertheless, often people do not wish to have their most cherished beliefs challenged (all of us are like this). It's not just that dogmatic Christians refuse to consider the theory of evolution objectively, it is that they do not want to challenge the beliefs that guide their lives. Consider two analogous cases.
John was raised Catholic, and all his life he has lived by the teachings of Christ. He believes in God, that God is good, and that we ought to follow the Ten Commandments because if he doesn't he'll go to hell. So, John lives his life according to these beliefs. Darwin comes along and challenges the foundation of Christianity: maybe God didn't create the world, maybe we were evolved from the same ancestral organism. If this were true, it would mean John's whole life would've been lived under false beliefs. Psychologically: it's better to believe a lie than to feel like your whole life was lived for a lie.
Mary is a physicist whose whole career has been guided by Newtonian mechanics. Now comes Quantum mechanics to challenge her whole world view -- what Thomas Kuhn calls a revolution in science. Mary is nearing retirement. If she accepts the new paradigm -- Quantum mechanics -- her life's work has been falsified, superseded, or rendered obsolete. Psychologically, she faces the same issues as John. She refuses to believe the new theory, even if it's true, because believing it would be too damaging to her... what? Self? I don't know... but you get the point.
Unfortunately for philosophers who like to consider quantum mechanics a contradiction of newtonian mechanics, one of the first things you do in quantum mechanics is to show that statistically matter approaches newtonian behavior in larger scales. So Mary's work is perfectly valid as long as she doesn't apply it to unusual circumstances.
On September 14 2009 10:09 Zinfandel wrote: I did not read the article. Nevertheless, often people do not wish to have their most cherished beliefs challenged (all of us are like this). It's not just that dogmatic Christians refuse to consider the theory of evolution objectively, it is that they do not want to challenge the beliefs that guide their lives. Consider two analogous cases.
John was raised Catholic, and all his life he has lived by the teachings of Christ. He believes in God, that God is good, and that we ought to follow the Ten Commandments because if he doesn't he'll go to hell. So, John lives his life according to these beliefs. Darwin comes along and challenges the foundation of Christianity: maybe God didn't create the world, maybe we were evolved from the same ancestral organism. If this were true, it would mean John's whole life would've been lived under false beliefs. Psychologically: it's better to believe a lie than to feel like your whole life was lived for a lie.
Mary is a physicist whose whole career has been guided by Newtonian mechanics. Now comes Quantum mechanics to challenge her whole world view -- what Thomas Kuhn calls a revolution in science. Mary is nearing retirement. If she accepts the new paradigm -- Quantum mechanics -- her life's work has been falsified, superseded, or rendered obsolete. Psychologically, she faces the same issues as John. She refuses to believe the new theory, even if it's true, because believing it would be too damaging to her... what? Self? I don't know... but you get the point.
Why cant John believe god was the guiding hand behind the big bang/evolution/anything science discovers ?
I'm here advocating something like a global agnosticism. Yes, evolution is the best theory that we presently have to explain the origin of species (all species) on Earth.
No, evolution explains the diversity among species given that life already exists. Evolution doesnt say anything about how life began,
Yes, there are very many rational arguments against the existence of a benevolent God. Yet we must look at the status of our knowledge from a historical perspective. Each era has believed themselves to be in possession of The Final Truth. And each era has been wrong. Personally I think evolution is right and I'm agnostic about the existence of God.
Believing in god and accepting evolutions isn't mutualy exclusive, not accepting evolution just shows ignorance towards the scientific method.
The reason why they get away with this is they use the word theory in a non scientific context.
Science if not a voted upon process.
If the whole world votes on the gender of a person it does not change the person's sex.
The scientific method is act of finding what the sex that is, and in times the given processes to finding out what the sex of that given person are stuck down (that process is a logic biased process to in order to prove or create a theory) but it does not make all theories wrong.
Frankly you can't accept science in parts, you frankly need to take science as a whole, you don't like a given answer to a given problem? Use logic and prove them wrong and guess what it becomes the generally accepted answer.
To argue against science without science is not only a fallacy but can only be targeted with semantics; it's nothing but a ploy used by the blindly religious.
Want to know what's not controversial in America? How about a movie about a guy who get torchered to death biased on religious text. Hell that's not only not controversial you can bring your children to it.
Evolution as darwin describe it has many mistakes that soon will be show to all but its still very acurate and the most acureate thing we have for it so its important we all know this
Everyone do yourselves a favor and watch this video
People who accept evolution are people who would gladly accept another theory about organisms if it had more facts and basis. They will not accept it blindly.
EPT
