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Science works best when it studies the here and now, the observable. That's the basis for confidence in empiricism, and that's where solid empiricism ends. Be

by kirse 13y ago

Science works best when it studies the here and now, the observable. That's the basis for confidence in empiricism, and that's where solid empiricism ends. Belief in a designer motivated many great men of science to understand this marvelous design, Newton himself being one of many. There's an unlimited world to be studied in the present, all with a high degree of confidence because it can be subject to strictly empirical testing. Quantum theory, understanding DNA, figuring out sleep, curing diseases, the list is really infinite. When science tries to take what it knows in the here-and-now and extrapolate those present-knowns billions of years into the past, that's where confidence should drop. At that point it's trying to take a hard-won confidence in present observations and borrow it for explaining the past. But it's not justified there. It's like trying to say you could observe a stock for 40 years and extrapolate that tiny slice of price history billions of years into the future -- and then proceed to claim to confidently know not only what the price was at the end of those billions of years, but also the price action along the entire way.

nitrogen 13y ago
Thanks to the speed of light and Cosmic Microwave Background, billions of years ago is here and now. Observing light from the past is quite different from predicting a stock in the future. For one thing, the laws of physics are inherently stable, while stock price fluctuations are inherently chaotic. Any attempt at an alternate explanation of the history of the universe must do a better job of explaining all the current observations (CMB, red shift, dark matter gravitational lensing, stellar formation and lifecycles, novae, fossil records, multi-isotope dating, plate tectonics, etc.).
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
I think you might want to read up on both the philosophy of science as well as science itself. Your notions of empiricism/testability as well as the scientific process strike me as a bit naive. For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. On that basis you might have to classify the existence of the sun as a mere hypothesis without empirical backing, though. Also, you should be aware that a lot of cosmological knowledge very much comes from the here-and-now, in that the light we capture with our telescopes is actually here right now - otherwise, we could not capture it with our telescopes. If you think we should discard those observations because the light we captured has been traveling for a while, you probably also would have to consider it a mere hypothesis that your computer screen showed this text one nanosecond ago. Cosmology does not somehow mysteriously extrapolate the temperature of the microwave background - it's something you can measure, and which has been measured, a lot. Of course, there are some assumptions - in the case of cosmology, the probably most important one would be the cosmological principle ("the laws of physics are the same everywhere"). But note that any cosmologist will tell you that that is an assumption, not something that is necessarily true. Also, you may want to consider that looking back billions of years is what allows us to derive laws of nature which would be a lot harder to figure out by only observing recent events, which then can be used to understand things that are of more immediate concern to us here and now. For example, the principle of evolution by natural selection was derived from observations of the past and its effects (that is, the biological landscape on the planet), and now is useful in order to explain an predict the development of antibiotics resistance.
- kirse 13y ago
  For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. No, don't project words into my mouth, because that's not what I'm saying. I have a spectrum of confidence when it comes to science, and the more its conclusions are reached under solid empiricism, the higher that level of confidence. If the cause was not observable, then it is completely and totally rational to take one's level of confidence down a few notches. After all, we're not able to observe HALF of the cause--(produces)-->outcomes process. The existence of the sun is not hypothetical, because its existence is on the right side of that process - it's an "already happened" outcome that is routinely confirmed by the senses daily. The discussion about what caused the sun's existence is irrelevant to the vast amounts of present knowledge that can be gained from empirically observing it in the here-and-now. Not only that, but any claims (Christian, science, or otherwise) about what really caused its existence can ultimately only be glued together by faith (a confidence in things unseen).
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    The discussion about what caused the sun's existence is irrelevant to the vast amounts of present knowledge that can be gained from empirically observing it in the here-and-now. Not only that, but any claims (Christian, science, or otherwise) about what really caused its existence can ultimately only be glued together by faith (a confidence in things unseen). It's not very accurate to use the word "faith" to describe any element of the scientific process. Consider the explanations to that effect from this article, which are good reading, but too lengthy to include here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/faith_in_science_and_religion_truth_authority_and_the_orderliness_of_nature.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... A useful excerpt from that article: "In such cases the word faith doesn’t mean “belief without good evidence,” but “confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.”"
    - kirse 13y ago
      So when you can't subject something to empirical observation... such as the original creation of the sun, where exactly does one gain a sure confidence in the explanation for it's original cause? Let's look at a few simple cause--(produces)-->outcome examples: - When a chair moves in a room (outcome) and you didn't observe the chair moving, can you with 100% confidence identify why/what moved the chair (cause)? - When your wallet goes missing from your desk (outcome) and you didn't observe its disappearance, can you 100% identify who/what moved it (cause)? - When you walk up to your house with a broken window (outcome) having never seen the window being broken, can you 100% with confidence identify the what broke the window (cause)? I'm not saying that science is using faith to establish confidence in observable OUTCOMES. Science is using faith when it cannot observe CAUSES and proceeds to make claims about those CAUSES. Faith has to do with attributing confidence to that which cannot be observed or subject to empiricism. For example, the original cause of the sun's existence. To be clear, when I use the word "observe", I mean in the sense of using empiricism and the senses to gather data about reality.
bermanoid 13y ago
The scientific problem with Christianity isn't that science proposes an answer to things. It's that it looks at the stories proposed by Christianity and calls "bullshit" because of Occam's razor. Virgin birth. Resurrection. Parting the seas. Water into wine. And so on. Things that straight up, didn't fucking happen, ever, by any reasonable probabilistic estimation based on what we know about the world today, and those are far more recent than billions of years ago - words in a book are so far outweighed by what we know about the world that we're talking sub .01% chances here. And if you want to start calling them metaphors or helpful fictions, that's fine, but you're departing from any regular version of Christianity. If the rules of our universe were so flexible that stuff like that could happen with such regularity less than a few thousand years ago, it's overwhelmingly likely that we'd have seen some evidence of gross violations of physical laws today. When it comes to creation and all that, sure, science is blind, most scientists would agree with you there. But that doesn't mean Christianity has the answers. I'll take ignorance over blind belief in a random story any day, and that's what science has going for it.

by kirse 13y ago

nitrogen 13y ago

Thanks to the speed of light and Cosmic Microwave Background, billions of years ago is here and now. Observing light from the past is quite different from predicting a stock in the future. For one thing, the laws of physics are inherently stable, while stock price fluctuations are inherently chaotic. Any attempt at an alternate explanation of the history of the universe must do a better job of explaining all the current observations (CMB, red shift, dark matter gravitational lensing, stellar formation and lifecycles, novae, fossil records, multi-isotope dating, plate tectonics, etc.).

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago

I think you might want to read up on both the philosophy of science as well as science itself. Your notions of empiricism/testability as well as the scientific process strike me as a bit naive. For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. On that basis you might have to classify the existence of the sun as a mere hypothesis without empirical backing, though. Also, you should be aware that a lot of cosmological knowledge very much comes from the here-and-now, in that the light we capture with our telescopes is actually here right now - otherwise, we could not capture it with our telescopes. If you think we should discard those observations because the light we captured has been traveling for a while, you probably also would have to consider it a mere hypothesis that your computer screen showed this text one nanosecond ago. Cosmology does not somehow mysteriously extrapolate the temperature of the microwave background - it's something you can measure, and which has been measured, a lot. Of course, there are some assumptions - in the case of cosmology, the probably most important one would be the cosmological principle ("the laws of physics are the same everywhere"). But note that any cosmologist will tell you that that is an assumption, not something that is necessarily true. Also, you may want to consider that looking back billions of years is what allows us to derive laws of nature which would be a lot harder to figure out by only observing recent events, which then can be used to understand things that are of more immediate concern to us here and now. For example, the principle of evolution by natural selection was derived from observations of the past and its effects (that is, the biological landscape on the planet), and now is useful in order to explain an predict the development of antibiotics resistance.

kirse 13y ago
For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. No, don't project words into my mouth, because that's not what I'm saying. I have a spectrum of confidence when it comes to science, and the more its conclusions are reached under solid empiricism, the higher that level of confidence. If the cause was not observable, then it is completely and totally rational to take one's level of confidence down a few notches. After all, we're not able to observe HALF of the cause--(produces)-->outcomes process. The existence of the sun is not hypothetical, because its existence is on the right side of that process - it's an "already happened" outcome that is routinely confirmed by the senses daily. The discussion about what caused the sun's existence is irrelevant to the vast amounts of present knowledge that can be gained from empirically observing it in the here-and-now. Not only that, but any claims (Christian, science, or otherwise) about what really caused its existence can ultimately only be glued together by faith (a confidence in things unseen).
- nitrogen 13y ago
  The discussion about what caused the sun's existence is irrelevant to the vast amounts of present knowledge that can be gained from empirically observing it in the here-and-now. Not only that, but any claims (Christian, science, or otherwise) about what really caused its existence can ultimately only be glued together by faith (a confidence in things unseen). It's not very accurate to use the word "faith" to describe any element of the scientific process. Consider the explanations to that effect from this article, which are good reading, but too lengthy to include here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/faith_in_science_and_religion_truth_authority_and_the_orderliness_of_nature.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... A useful excerpt from that article: "In such cases the word faith doesn’t mean “belief without good evidence,” but “confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.”"
  - kirse 13y ago
    So when you can't subject something to empirical observation... such as the original creation of the sun, where exactly does one gain a sure confidence in the explanation for it's original cause? Let's look at a few simple cause--(produces)-->outcome examples: - When a chair moves in a room (outcome) and you didn't observe the chair moving, can you with 100% confidence identify why/what moved the chair (cause)? - When your wallet goes missing from your desk (outcome) and you didn't observe its disappearance, can you 100% identify who/what moved it (cause)? - When you walk up to your house with a broken window (outcome) having never seen the window being broken, can you 100% with confidence identify the what broke the window (cause)? I'm not saying that science is using faith to establish confidence in observable OUTCOMES. Science is using faith when it cannot observe CAUSES and proceeds to make claims about those CAUSES. Faith has to do with attributing confidence to that which cannot be observed or subject to empiricism. For example, the original cause of the sun's existence. To be clear, when I use the word "observe", I mean in the sense of using empiricism and the senses to gather data about reality.

bermanoid 13y ago

The scientific problem with Christianity isn't that science proposes an answer to things. It's that it looks at the stories proposed by Christianity and calls "bullshit" because of Occam's razor. Virgin birth. Resurrection. Parting the seas. Water into wine. And so on. Things that straight up, didn't fucking happen, ever, by any reasonable probabilistic estimation based on what we know about the world today, and those are far more recent than billions of years ago - words in a book are so far outweighed by what we know about the world that we're talking sub .01% chances here. And if you want to start calling them metaphors or helpful fictions, that's fine, but you're departing from any regular version of Christianity. If the rules of our universe were so flexible that stuff like that could happen with such regularity less than a few thousand years ago, it's overwhelmingly likely that we'd have seen some evidence of gross violations of physical laws today. When it comes to creation and all that, sure, science is blind, most scientists would agree with you there. But that doesn't mean Christianity has the answers. I'll take ignorance over blind belief in a random story any day, and that's what science has going for it.