4 ms·
The Catholic church for centuries now has employed an advocatus Diaboli, someone whose entire job it is to examine claims of miracles and make the argument that
by bandrami 10y ago
The Catholic church for centuries now has employed an advocatus Diaboli, someone whose entire job it is to examine claims of miracles and make the argument that in fact they are natural phenomena. They are priests who have been trained in science (there's a perhaps surprising number of those).
I think this is a good thing. There should be somebody whose job it is to poke holes in the castles we build.
- JorgeGT 10y ago> there's a perhaps surprising number of those The Vatican still runs an astronomical observatory that researches trans-neptunian objects, exoplanets and so on: http://www.vaticanobservatory.va/ http://www.vaticanobservatory.va/
- bandrami 10y agoSimilarly, an astronomer friend of mine trains Buddhist monks in physical astronomy. These are almost certainly good things.
- argonaut 10y agoYes. Those are peer reviewers. And people still publish negative result papers.