How do you suppose the nails are created? They don't grow on trees. The production of the raw metal uses electro-chemical energy. It is precisely this energy he found.
That may be correct- I've seen at least one other potential explaination. But you're completely correct in that the process is energy negative when you figure in the cost of making the nail (and likely also the copper).
Trees- but the problem is that they drop off the tree when ripe. Which means you have to rewire. More often than you'd have to replace the corroding parts.
One big difference is that the lemon is dead and slowly rotting, needing replacement. The tree is living, thus the only thing that needs replacing (assuming that the drainage doesn't destroy the tree) is the anode and the cathode. But we use electricity to make aluminimum don't we? I'll bet this comes out to be energy negative in the long run.
Not entirely true- many of my small device chargers on my desk are running between 20-2000 mA. Anything over 2 amps would be great- anything over 20 mA would still be usefull, but you might need a small forest to create anything great.
From the article:Lagadonis said tests have generated 0.8 volts to 1.2 volts by driving an aluminum roofing nail half an inch into a tree attached to a copper water pipe driven 7 inches into the ground. But the electricity is useless because it's unstable and fluctuates.
Here's the answer: 13 aluminum roofing nails, 13 copper pipes, hooked up in series to an automotive voltage regulator and an ampmeter. If you get a fluctuation between 5-20 amps, take out the ampmeter and replace it with fuse and a cigarette lighter adapter, and plug in your iGo charger to charge your cell phone off of it.
It's a waste of time to label all science that way because science is *defined* that way.
Apparently not well enough- because we continue to have people claim that science is reality instead of merely science observes reality.
How about this. We label your church with a big sign saying "The bible is a collection of stories ripped off from earlier religions and used as a means for the leaders of the Roman empire to subjugate their people. Many different, conflicting, versions of the stories exist within the bible itself and many more stories were edited out primarily as a means to allow a few evil people to pillage and murder the supporters of the other equally valid stories. There is little, if any, evidence that there ever was a Jesus and the gospels were written long after his death by people who never met him if he ever did live."
Actually, I've seen Bibles labeled as such- The Jesus Seminar's _The_Five_Gospels_ comes to mind. I've also seen lesser religious works labeled as such- the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it "We have moral certainty that we are correct, but since the Church is a Human Insititution, we can never have absolute certatainty about anything".
If that's the point, why is Evolution singled out on the sticker rather than containing a general warning against the dogma of all scientific theories?
Maybe because it's a biology textbook that is written specifically to the idea that Evolution is not a scientific theory, but a religious dogma not to be questioned on pain of failing the course?
Hmmmm. Also, have you read this particular book which the sticker was placed upon?
Actually I have- and that's the point. But you're right, there's a larger point that this should be on any textbook that does NOT discuss scientific philosophy.
Can you tell me definitively whether the philosophy of science is covered in the textbook and whether evolution is presented in a uniquely dogmatic manner?
Definitively yes- proveably you'll have to read it for yourself. But in the past 120 years, evolution has become such a basis for biology that *any* biology book MUST treat evolution dogmatically if it's going to be accepted as such in the United States. Scientific philosophy is considered to be teaching religion by many- and so that's cut out. I would agree that in cutting out scientific philosophy as a religion, you don't actually remove religion from the classroom, you just end up establishing a new religion.
Fortunately ID continues to fail on many other major points of science. First it does not actually solve the problem it merely adds another layer.
That complaint is in fact Occam's razor- the idea we shouldn't add additional layers of complexity. If Occam's razor is in fact logically unsupportable, then this point is lost.
That chains continues so long as there remains a creator and a createe.
For all science knows, there is always a creator and a createe- that is, there are no uncaused events, everything is causual. So therefore, that's an argument FOR ID. The extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence is that there is a break in the chain of cause and event; or that there can be a break in that chain.
Actually Occam's razor would lead one more directly to ID. Evolution requires many assumptions, ID requires only the assumption that some invisible unquestionable magical being in the sky did it all. Since Occam's razor uses the number of assumptions and not the probability of the assumptions then Evolution would be shaved by the razor if ID were a valid scientific theory in the first place.
Now that's an interesting idea- that evolution requires *more* assumptions. I've been going on the idea that evolution requires the same number of assumptions- that the assumption of an indeterministic, non-causual universe is just as outlandish, complex, and improbable as the assumption of a creator. Can you explain the idea that evolution requires more than that? And how does that differ from ID's theistic evolution theory (which I have a problem differing from atheistic evolution to begin with- their predictions and assumptions seem entirely equal to me)?
There is no question at all. It isn't science. It is religion.
Agreed- but the problem is, science as it's taught at the high school level is ALSO a religion.
Well, then you went to a very bizarre high school. At mine and that of everybody I know, the scientific method was taught and it was made explicitly clear that theories are the best current explanation of the available evidence but they are subject to change as more evidence comes to light. Heck, we started with that lecture in junior high and it was reinforced every year.
Reinforced how? Were alternative explainations ok on tests for instance? Were you encouraged to come up with your own theories even if they were different than the textbook? Or was it like my highschool biology class: A tacit admission that evolution is just a theory- but the whole class based on it and any attempt to question it's assumptions was penalized heavily in the grade book?
Just because you had shitty teachers doesn't mean the rest of us did.
I'd call any teacher who relies on the court system to censor ideas from the classroom a shitty teacher.
No, the trolling was where you took the statement that science has never claimed to have *all* the answers to *everything*, and then said yes it does since your high school science tests were like that.
Well, that's a correct statement. "science has NEVER claimed" is a statement easily falsifiable by a single instance of someone claiming to teach science claiming that.
No it doesn't. It's religious creationism and nothing besides.
Then you apparently don't know the different ID theories very well- ID covers everything from Young Earth Creationism to Theistic Evolution. I'd certainly agree with you that one side of that spectrum is more scientific than the other side- but to deny that ANY of it is scientific is stupid in the extreme.
Of course it's banned by law, we believe in freedom of religion in this country.
That's funny, because banning it by law is freedom FROM religion, not freedom of religion. In fact, it's the very definition of legislating against the free exercise of religion.
That means you don't get to shove your personal beliefs into a science class.
But scientists do that all the time- their personal belief that reality exists, for instance.
Believe what you will, but don't make feeble dishonest attempts to shove your religion into a science class.
If that's the rule, then occam's razor, objective evidence, and the scientific method (for example) should also be banned from science class, since these are all religious beliefs unsupported by evidence.
It hurts science and it makes your god no better than a plate of pasta.
Science hurts itself worse by claiming to be anything but just another religion.
Wrong, universal means that the rules etc. apply everywhere.
If the rules apply everywhere- to everything that exists- in what way does this NOT imply that science has an answer for everything?
For example the theory of gravity is often said to be universal. That means it applies in the whole universe, not that the theory of gravity can explain everything.
Ok- so what you meant to say is that the scientific method is limited to the things it can explain.
I don't accept Wikipedia as a primary or secondary source, sorry.
As long as there is a possibility to disprove that explanation (otherwise it would not be scientific), I don't see your point.
All that is is being dogmatic about science- being religious about science. That's VERY dangerous in the long run. Science should not repeat the mistakes of religion.
What do you want anyway? Equal rights for all explanations? That would be the same as no explanations at all.
I'm fine with that too- explainations have a tendency to be exclusionary and limiting. But yes, Equal Rights not Special Rights. I contend that by placing science above other religions, we are establishing science as a new religion, to be taught by law to all.
Really? What pre-death predictions do religions make?
How about the one that if you do something to somebody else that is perceived by them as evil, they will find a way to do something equally evil to you? Of course, that's just Newtonian physics applied to ethics- but the prediction of it predates Newton by about 9,000 years.
You think school children should learn Super-String theory?
Yes, if you're going to be consistent with the idea that science can be wrong.
You still don't understand what science is.
Either that- or you have such incredible faith in your own perceptions and senses that you don't understand that other people may have different perceptions and senses.
(Apart from that you have trouble with logic: You say science is taught as a religion because it is not like religion and has to become like religion to become "true science"? That just doesn't make ANY sense at all)
No, what I'm saying is that science is already being taught just like a religion- and thus we might as well teach all religions equally. Alternatively, you could teach true science- and admit that science is inaccurate and arbitrary in even the best circumstances- in which case you can limit science class to only the religion of science, but you have to add a bunch of other classes for other religions and make them all electives. Either method is fine by me, because neither one puts science on a pedastal as being "better" than all other religions.
The reason why there are only few (usually just one) accepted theories for a given phenomenon is that science is constantly weeding out incorrect theories. That is the only way to actually *LEARN* something.
No, actually, it's not- people learned for centuries before exclusionary modern science came on to the scene. It may well turn out, a few millenia from now when the religion of science becomes mature instead of just a cult, to be the *best* way to learn things- but the jury's still out on that.
Natural philosophy is merely a transition period between medieval Scholasticism and modern science.
I was unaware that Scolasticism predated St. Thomas Aquinas.
Ironically what distinguishes natural philosophy from science (at least the most important distinction) is that natural philosophers didn't test their theories a lot.
Funny- it sure looked to me like they did! I'd say the main difference between natural philosophy and science is certainty that reality exists.
I'll say it once more: Some questions, such as the famous "what is the meaning of life?", are unanswerable. Science does NOT ANSWER these questions!
Then you would agree with say, a statement to that effect in grade school science classes.
Axioms are another way of handling difficult questions. In this case, we have questions, such as "why is 2 + 2 = 4?" that have infinitely many correct answers (set of axioms), but we can usefully apply only 1 answer at a time, otherwise we would not be logically consistent.
Being logically consistent is not necessary. Logic is just another philosophy- another religion under this idea. Another system of beliefs to take on faith. There are many such philosophies that are internally logically consistent, which don't make sense in a different philosophy.
The deeper question, "why is some set of axioms true?" is unanswerable for all sets of axioms if you refuse to accept that they are self-evident.
And I do so, at least for the idea that religion is a science, refuse the idea that ANY religion is self-evident before it is stated. Axioms must be taken on faith that they are true; we can't prove that reality exists let alone that axioms are self-evident.
We know they are unanswerable (Incompleteness). That does not make axioms useless, or the use of axioms evidence that we are taking things on faith.
Why not? Since you can't claim in all worldviews that any set of axioms is self evident- that sure looks like faith to me.
Use of a tool does not imply "belief" in a tool in all possible situations.
Faith doesn't need to be in all possible situations- faith might only cover a single situation.
We use Occam's Razor to justify picking the simplest answers (sets of axioms), and run with that.
That justification has nothing beneath it but faith. But that's ok- all justifications are about faith- faith doesn't automatically make things correct or incorrect, just lacking in evidence.
Science has a totally deserved reputation.
Actually- until you prove that axioms are self-evident, no it doesn't. If it truly deserved that reputation, it wouldn't be so limited.
Here you are, posting on Slashdot via the Internet, which is one of the most recent fruits in a long chain of scientific advances, some of these advances being the understanding of electricity, information theory, and materials science, and you're trying to ram the square peg of science into the round hole of religion, saying science is no "better" than any other religion?! Do you believe you exist?
I believe I do, but I have no real PROOF that I do. Nor do I have proof that the computer I'm sitting in front of exists, or that any of this chain of scientific advances exists. I believe that they do- but that belief is religious in nature, it's faith that there is a reality. I can't prove that there is a reality. So actually, science is just another round peg that fits through the round hole.
How do we know the world is more than 5 years, or 5 minutes old?
I don't. I choose to believe that, and have faith in it, but it's no more than faith.
We don't. We can't. Scientific evidence, in addition to the evidence of our own senses and memories, says the universe is more than 5 minutes old.
Yes, but we choose to BELIEVE that evidence exists- we have faith in it.
Accepting the evidence of our senses is not a matter of faith,
Completely incorrect.
it's a matter of rationality. You veer into semantics if you try to argue that rationality is faith.
Rationality is not accepting the evidence of our senses- if that was so, people hallucinating would be completely rational. Rationality is insisting that the system of faith we choose to believe in, the religion we choose to believe in, is logically consistent and explains the evidence of our senses. There are rational religions and irrational religions- I would certainly put science among the rational ones if that helps any. But that doesn't mean we're accepting it on faith any less.
Any reputable scientist welcomes the opportunity to prove himself wrong. "Science fundamentalist" is a contradiction in terms.
Absolutely- but then again, as I was saying, so is Christian fundamentalism, or Islamic fundamentalism. If it wasn't for fundamentalism, there would be no debate- the end of the whole idea of ID would have been stopped in Kansas with a simple sticker on a textbook that claimed basically the same as what you're saying- that science is not concerned with absolute truth.
Those stickers, again, damn with faint praise.
Too bad. As you said, any REPUTABLE scientist would agree with the stickers. That means anybody who disagrees with them has no business claiming to be a reputable scientist.
To say that "Evolution is just a theory" is to attempt to deceive the audience as to what it means to be "a theory".
Which is better- to claim something might be false, or to insinuate by omission that it is written in stone and cannot be questioned?
I absolutely agree that any good science class will have a clear discussion of what is, and is not, scientific inquiry.
Until we do, then the problem is NOT one of science vs religion, but of two separate groups of fundamentalists taking over the question and fighting.
It is not the place of science to accept or deny those things.
Not normally- no. But the problem is, science as currently being taught (rather disreputably) is denying those things- a group of disreputable fundamentalists has co-opted science classes around the country and is filing lawsuits to *force* science to deny those things.
Science is about observable reality.
No, actually, science is about OBJECTIVE reality- which doesn't really exist, but that's beside the point. Observable reality includes a lot more than objective reality does- every human being sees the world differently, there is no single observable reality.
Anything that is not about observing reality, formulating hypotheses, and attempting to disprove them is not science.
Well, then that includes most reasonable religions- and doesn't include the type of people who would file a lawsuit to censor a cirriculum. Fundamentalists still not included.
Just because you learn about science in science class does not mean science can explain "everything". It's actually a pretty straighforward concept that questions in science class are about things that science can explain, why you have such a problem with it seems quite strange to me.
Funny how you say this, and then start the next bit out with:
That's simple because science is universal.
If science is universal, then it can explain everything in the universe- everything that exists. Only if science is NOT universal can it claim not to explain everything.
We would end up with thousands or even millions of explanations.
I'm not afraid of that. I'm more afraid of the single explaination- that only one way of looking at the world is considered "correct" and all others are excluded.
1) those are at the forefront of science and are usually not teached in school 2) Even if there are competing theories, there are maybe 2 or 3 of them, never hundreds or thousands. 3) Most importantly, unlike religion no theory claims to be "the truth" - it is just an USEFUL explanation of things we measure or see. I say useful, because theories make predictions and those predictions are useful in real life. (Religion on the other hand makes no useful predictions)
Completely correct except for that last- Religion has to make useful predictions, else nobody would choose to believe it. But your #1 and #3 are inherantly contradictory with each other- if you're teaching science, you should teach all the alternatives. And #2 just shows that science is being taught as a reliigion- if it were truly being taught as science, it WOULD have hundreds or thousands of competing theories.
Which would be?
Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton all believed in something called "Natural Philosophy". I contend that the modern scientific method is a corruption of this. A useful corruption possibly- but still a corruption.
"working assumptions" is damning with faint praise, if (according to your definition) an "assumption" is something you take on faith, and never question.
Never questioning denies faith- faith means you're taking a chance on being wrong. That's the basic flaw of fundamentalists of any stripe- science, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, whatever. By not questioning their basic assumptions, no faith is required- it just is truth and you're not going to ever doubt it. The difference between good science and bad science is admiting that there are no facts- only working assumptions- and never stop doubting or questioning them. The key to good religious faith is exactly the same thing- you can be morally certain, but if you ever find yourself being absolutely certain, that's when you get into trouble and start looking at your neighbors as infidels and heretics that only deserve killing.
Scientific "facts" (I think "facts" is a dangerous and misleading terms) are theories that are well-supported by observation, but by definition can and should be disproven with additional data. Science is the process of refining theories to more closely explain and predict observable phenomena. Science is not a set of "facts".
Then you'd have no problem with the disclaimer sticker proposed for textbooks in Kansas. And that's all ID proponents are really asking for- a little less certainty, the removal of fundamentalism. The fact that YEC fundamentalists don't see that ID would be the end of their logically unsupportable interpretation of scripture is just icing on the cake.
Alternate worldviews, beliefs, religions, and faiths have nothing whatsoever to do with science.
Ah, you came so close- science can only be good science if it DOES accept alternate worldviews, beliefs, religions and faiths. The second we start censorship of alternative ideas, is the point we cross the line from good science into bad science.
So your tests in high school covered everything?
Dude, you're such a ridiculous troll. Questions on high school science tests that I've seen are simple enough to admit simple yes/no answers. Your response had nothing to do with the post you were responding to.
I got points for original thought. I rightly didn't get points for ignorant trolls.
When it comes to the question of whether ID is a science or not, we're talking about teaching it at the high school level. I contend that the "science" taught at the high school level is indeed taught as a religion- completely dogmatic and alternate explainations are not allowed. You may consider that a troll- I consider it entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.
Sure it is. Other explanations are more than welcome.
No, in fact they aren't. ID is an alternate explaination that fits the evidence we have so far in evolution- but it's barred from the classroom BY LAW, and every time anybody comes up with an explaination that challenges the orthodoxy of the textbooks used at a high school level, the result is the same.
A more accurate statement (but still paraphrased) is that, given one or more theories which explain all the observables, you should use the theory which seems simpler until you discover that it doesn't explain all the observables.
Well, I don't know of ANY theory that explains all the observables- observables would include completely subjective things such as religious visions, magical tricks, and apparently supernatural events. ALL these things are OBSERVABLE- and most can't be explained very easily.
What disclaimer is that? "Science class is about science"?
Yep, or to put it another way "Scientific facts are actually working assumptions, and may be disproven with additional data or even by alternate worldviews, beliefs, religions and faiths." Far too many textbooks today treat science as religious, eternal truth and fact, and fail to say that science is just a model of how the world works.
In that case, you've lost a huge reason why ID is considered not a science.
The scientific method is not.
I'm not judging whether it is false logic or true logic, only whether it is objectively derived or an assumption. The scientific method is an assumption. It's arguably a very correct and successfull assumption- but it remains an assumption, and thus a belief, a faith.
I.E. there is no academic or scientific reason for the existence of the sticker that can't be better conducted within the text book itself or in texts on the philosophy of science.
But that's the point- many scientific textbooks NEVER deal with the point that scientific facts are actually working assumptions that may be wrong. Thus they are teaching science as a religion- as a certainty instead of as the possibly wrong set of theories that it is.
I'll agree on that, because it is central to my argument that science IS a religion.
Now, science most definitely does not take ANYTHING on faith. Sure, we have plenty of axioms. We have the Incompleteness Theorem which says logic is by necessity incomplete-- there just aren't enough proofs to go around. And what does that mean? Does the necessity for axioms mean science has to take things on faith?
YES! If you have an unproven axiom (by definition axioms are unproven and unproveable) you have a belief- and thus faith. Anybody who says different is lying to protect the idea that Science doesn't take anything on faith.
Because science doesn't take anything on faith, it has achieved a truly stunning reputation of accuracy and verifiability.
A totally undeserved reputation- because an axiom has to be taken on faith to be an axiom, and a "working assumption" can never actually be a fact.
I do think there should be a note mentioning it as one of those beliefs commonly accepted in the dark ages that has no place in an enlightened modern society that bases belief in fact rather than picking random mythical figures for which there is no evidence and believing in them because someone told us we "just have to believe".
We've got plenty of other things for which there is no evidence and believe in them simply because someone told us we "just have to believe". Take the principle of not multiplying entities for instance, also known as Occam's razor. It's completely unproven that the simplest answer is always correct- and this has led science astray in the past, most recently with the continental plate drift theory which was denied for half a century merely because it was too complex, despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary. So such a label could be required- but we'd also have to label Occam's Razor and the scientific method itself the same.
Well, to be fair, the scientific use of Occam's razor is typically: "The simplest explanation is most likely the correction one."
Yep- when quite often that is actually NOT the case. But it's a nice dogma to build models upon, and works for the purpose for which it was designed.
Of course as with many things in science, this is actually a PHILOSOPHICAL point, and the "razor" part comes in, because it is actually: "Do not multiply entities unnecessarily."
Yes, but there is a religious belief in this philosophical point- it's used to deny competing theories from damaging the orthodox one.
Typically, if you don't need an intelligent designer to have evolution, then there is no reason to persume one to be there.
Yes, that's what the razor would suggest. But the razor has been wrong in the past, and will be wrong again. We have 10,000 years worth of experiential evidence that an intelligent designer exists- we really need equal experiential evidence to deny one.
Which religions teach that their god[s] most likely do not exist at all and that all of its explanations of the world are most likely totally wrong?
Zen Buddhism teaches this directly- that's the whole point of the Koans. And actually, it just borrowed that philosophy from other eastern religions, and from animism itself, which is the most primative religion that we know about so far.
Slashdot Mirror
I still say the difference is that the tree is unlikely to move.
How do you suppose the nails are created? They don't grow on trees. The production of the raw metal uses electro-chemical energy. It is precisely this energy he found.
That may be correct- I've seen at least one other potential explaination. But you're completely correct in that the process is energy negative when you figure in the cost of making the nail (and likely also the copper).
What do lemons grow on?
Trees- but the problem is that they drop off the tree when ripe. Which means you have to rewire. More often than you'd have to replace the corroding parts.
One big difference is that the lemon is dead and slowly rotting, needing replacement. The tree is living, thus the only thing that needs replacing (assuming that the drainage doesn't destroy the tree) is the anode and the cathode. But we use electricity to make aluminimum don't we? I'll bet this comes out to be energy negative in the long run.
Not entirely true- many of my small device chargers on my desk are running between 20-2000 mA. Anything over 2 amps would be great- anything over 20 mA would still be usefull, but you might need a small forest to create anything great.
From the article:Lagadonis said tests have generated 0.8 volts to 1.2 volts by driving an aluminum roofing nail half an inch into a tree attached to a copper water pipe driven 7 inches into the ground. But the electricity is useless because it's unstable and fluctuates.
Here's the answer: 13 aluminum roofing nails, 13 copper pipes, hooked up in series to an automotive voltage regulator and an ampmeter. If you get a fluctuation between 5-20 amps, take out the ampmeter and replace it with fuse and a cigarette lighter adapter, and plug in your iGo charger to charge your cell phone off of it.
It's a waste of time to label all science that way because science is *defined* that way.
Apparently not well enough- because we continue to have people claim that science is reality instead of merely science observes reality.
How about this. We label your church with a big sign saying "The bible is a collection of stories ripped off from earlier religions and used as a means for the leaders of the Roman empire to subjugate their people. Many different, conflicting, versions of the stories exist within the bible itself and many more stories were edited out primarily as a means to allow a few evil people to pillage and murder the supporters of the other equally valid stories. There is little, if any, evidence that there ever was a Jesus and the gospels were written long after his death by people who never met him if he ever did live."
Actually, I've seen Bibles labeled as such- The Jesus Seminar's _The_Five_Gospels_ comes to mind. I've also seen lesser religious works labeled as such- the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it "We have moral certainty that we are correct, but since the Church is a Human Insititution, we can never have absolute certatainty about anything".
If that's the point, why is Evolution singled out on the sticker rather than containing a general warning against the dogma of all scientific theories?
Maybe because it's a biology textbook that is written specifically to the idea that Evolution is not a scientific theory, but a religious dogma not to be questioned on pain of failing the course?
Hmmmm. Also, have you read this particular book which the sticker was placed upon?
Actually I have- and that's the point. But you're right, there's a larger point that this should be on any textbook that does NOT discuss scientific philosophy.
Can you tell me definitively whether the philosophy of science is covered in the textbook and whether evolution is presented in a uniquely dogmatic manner?
Definitively yes- proveably you'll have to read it for yourself. But in the past 120 years, evolution has become such a basis for biology that *any* biology book MUST treat evolution dogmatically if it's going to be accepted as such in the United States. Scientific philosophy is considered to be teaching religion by many- and so that's cut out. I would agree that in cutting out scientific philosophy as a religion, you don't actually remove religion from the classroom, you just end up establishing a new religion.
In other words, if at a dinner table you are offered to choose between a spoon and a Rube Goldberg machine which functions as a spoon, take the spoon.
And my point is that the Rube Goldberg machine is sometimes more correct.
Fortunately ID continues to fail on many other major points of science. First it does not actually solve the problem it merely adds another layer.
That complaint is in fact Occam's razor- the idea we shouldn't add additional layers of complexity. If Occam's razor is in fact logically unsupportable, then this point is lost.
That chains continues so long as there remains a creator and a createe.
For all science knows, there is always a creator and a createe- that is, there are no uncaused events, everything is causual. So therefore, that's an argument FOR ID. The extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence is that there is a break in the chain of cause and event; or that there can be a break in that chain.
Actually Occam's razor would lead one more directly to ID. Evolution requires many assumptions, ID requires only the assumption that some invisible unquestionable magical being in the sky did it all. Since Occam's razor uses the number of assumptions and not the probability of the assumptions then Evolution would be shaved by the razor if ID were a valid scientific theory in the first place.
Now that's an interesting idea- that evolution requires *more* assumptions. I've been going on the idea that evolution requires the same number of assumptions- that the assumption of an indeterministic, non-causual universe is just as outlandish, complex, and improbable as the assumption of a creator. Can you explain the idea that evolution requires more than that? And how does that differ from ID's theistic evolution theory (which I have a problem differing from atheistic evolution to begin with- their predictions and assumptions seem entirely equal to me)?
There is no question at all. It isn't science. It is religion.
Agreed- but the problem is, science as it's taught at the high school level is ALSO a religion.
Well, then you went to a very bizarre high school. At mine and that of everybody I know, the scientific method was taught and it was made explicitly clear that theories are the best current explanation of the available evidence but they are subject to change as more evidence comes to light. Heck, we started with that lecture in junior high and it was reinforced every year.
Reinforced how? Were alternative explainations ok on tests for instance? Were you encouraged to come up with your own theories even if they were different than the textbook? Or was it like my highschool biology class: A tacit admission that evolution is just a theory- but the whole class based on it and any attempt to question it's assumptions was penalized heavily in the grade book?
Just because you had shitty teachers doesn't mean the rest of us did.
I'd call any teacher who relies on the court system to censor ideas from the classroom a shitty teacher.
No, the trolling was where you took the statement that science has never claimed to have *all* the answers to *everything*, and then said yes it does since your high school science tests were like that.
Well, that's a correct statement. "science has NEVER claimed" is a statement easily falsifiable by a single instance of someone claiming to teach science claiming that.
No it doesn't. It's religious creationism and nothing besides.
Then you apparently don't know the different ID theories very well- ID covers everything from Young Earth Creationism to Theistic Evolution. I'd certainly agree with you that one side of that spectrum is more scientific than the other side- but to deny that ANY of it is scientific is stupid in the extreme.
Of course it's banned by law, we believe in freedom of religion in this country.
That's funny, because banning it by law is freedom FROM religion, not freedom of religion. In fact, it's the very definition of legislating against the free exercise of religion.
That means you don't get to shove your personal beliefs into a science class.
But scientists do that all the time- their personal belief that reality exists, for instance.
Believe what you will, but don't make feeble dishonest attempts to shove your religion into a science class.
If that's the rule, then occam's razor, objective evidence, and the scientific method (for example) should also be banned from science class, since these are all religious beliefs unsupported by evidence.
It hurts science and it makes your god no better than a plate of pasta.
Science hurts itself worse by claiming to be anything but just another religion.
Wrong, universal means that the rules etc. apply everywhere.
If the rules apply everywhere- to everything that exists- in what way does this NOT imply that science has an answer for everything?
For example the theory of gravity is often said to be universal. That means it applies in the whole universe, not that the theory of gravity can explain everything.
Ok- so what you meant to say is that the scientific method is limited to the things it can explain.
You can also check for the word's meaning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal
I don't accept Wikipedia as a primary or secondary source, sorry.
As long as there is a possibility to disprove that explanation (otherwise it would not be scientific), I don't see your point.
All that is is being dogmatic about science- being religious about science. That's VERY dangerous in the long run. Science should not repeat the mistakes of religion.
What do you want anyway? Equal rights for all explanations? That would be the same as no explanations at all.
I'm fine with that too- explainations have a tendency to be exclusionary and limiting. But yes, Equal Rights not Special Rights. I contend that by placing science above other religions, we are establishing science as a new religion, to be taught by law to all.
Really? What pre-death predictions do religions make?
How about the one that if you do something to somebody else that is perceived by them as evil, they will find a way to do something equally evil to you? Of course, that's just Newtonian physics applied to ethics- but the prediction of it predates Newton by about 9,000 years.
You think school children should learn Super-String theory?
Yes, if you're going to be consistent with the idea that science can be wrong.
You still don't understand what science is.
Either that- or you have such incredible faith in your own perceptions and senses that you don't understand that other people may have different perceptions and senses.
(Apart from that you have trouble with logic: You say science is taught as a religion because it is not like religion and has to become like religion to become "true science"? That just doesn't make ANY sense at all)
No, what I'm saying is that science is already being taught just like a religion- and thus we might as well teach all religions equally. Alternatively, you could teach true science- and admit that science is inaccurate and arbitrary in even the best circumstances- in which case you can limit science class to only the religion of science, but you have to add a bunch of other classes for other religions and make them all electives. Either method is fine by me, because neither one puts science on a pedastal as being "better" than all other religions.
The reason why there are only few (usually just one) accepted theories for a given phenomenon is that science is constantly weeding out incorrect theories. That is the only way to actually *LEARN* something.
No, actually, it's not- people learned for centuries before exclusionary modern science came on to the scene. It may well turn out, a few millenia from now when the religion of science becomes mature instead of just a cult, to be the *best* way to learn things- but the jury's still out on that.
Natural philosophy is merely a transition period between medieval Scholasticism and modern science.
I was unaware that Scolasticism predated St. Thomas Aquinas.
Ironically what distinguishes natural philosophy from science (at least the most important distinction) is that natural philosophers didn't test their theories a lot.
Funny- it sure looked to me like they did! I'd say the main difference between natural philosophy and science is certainty that reality exists.
Again, what do you want? That
I'll say it once more: Some questions, such as the famous "what is the meaning of life?", are unanswerable. Science does NOT ANSWER these questions!
Then you would agree with say, a statement to that effect in grade school science classes.
Axioms are another way of handling difficult questions. In this case, we have questions, such as "why is 2 + 2 = 4?" that have infinitely many correct answers (set of axioms), but we can usefully apply only 1 answer at a time, otherwise we would not be logically consistent.
Being logically consistent is not necessary. Logic is just another philosophy- another religion under this idea. Another system of beliefs to take on faith. There are many such philosophies that are internally logically consistent, which don't make sense in a different philosophy.
The deeper question, "why is some set of axioms true?" is unanswerable for all sets of axioms if you refuse to accept that they are self-evident.
And I do so, at least for the idea that religion is a science, refuse the idea that ANY religion is self-evident before it is stated. Axioms must be taken on faith that they are true; we can't prove that reality exists let alone that axioms are self-evident.
We know they are unanswerable (Incompleteness). That does not make axioms useless, or the use of axioms evidence that we are taking things on faith.
Why not? Since you can't claim in all worldviews that any set of axioms is self evident- that sure looks like faith to me.
Use of a tool does not imply "belief" in a tool in all possible situations.
Faith doesn't need to be in all possible situations- faith might only cover a single situation.
We use Occam's Razor to justify picking the simplest answers (sets of axioms), and run with that.
That justification has nothing beneath it but faith. But that's ok- all justifications are about faith- faith doesn't automatically make things correct or incorrect, just lacking in evidence.
Science has a totally deserved reputation.
Actually- until you prove that axioms are self-evident, no it doesn't. If it truly deserved that reputation, it wouldn't be so limited.
Here you are, posting on Slashdot via the Internet, which is one of the most recent fruits in a long chain of scientific advances, some of these advances being the understanding of electricity, information theory, and materials science, and you're trying to ram the square peg of science into the round hole of religion, saying science is no "better" than any other religion?! Do you believe you exist?
I believe I do, but I have no real PROOF that I do. Nor do I have proof that the computer I'm sitting in front of exists, or that any of this chain of scientific advances exists. I believe that they do- but that belief is religious in nature, it's faith that there is a reality. I can't prove that there is a reality. So actually, science is just another round peg that fits through the round hole.
How do we know the world is more than 5 years, or 5 minutes old?
I don't. I choose to believe that, and have faith in it, but it's no more than faith.
We don't. We can't. Scientific evidence, in addition to the evidence of our own senses and memories, says the universe is more than 5 minutes old.
Yes, but we choose to BELIEVE that evidence exists- we have faith in it.
Accepting the evidence of our senses is not a matter of faith,
Completely incorrect.
it's a matter of rationality. You veer into semantics if you try to argue that rationality is faith.
Rationality is not accepting the evidence of our senses- if that was so, people hallucinating would be completely rational. Rationality is insisting that the system of faith we choose to believe in, the religion we choose to believe in, is logically consistent and explains the evidence of our senses. There are rational religions and irrational religions- I would certainly put science among the rational ones if that helps any. But that doesn't mean we're accepting it on faith any less.
Any reputable scientist welcomes the opportunity to prove himself wrong. "Science fundamentalist" is a contradiction in terms.
Absolutely- but then again, as I was saying, so is Christian fundamentalism, or Islamic fundamentalism. If it wasn't for fundamentalism, there would be no debate- the end of the whole idea of ID would have been stopped in Kansas with a simple sticker on a textbook that claimed basically the same as what you're saying- that science is not concerned with absolute truth.
Those stickers, again, damn with faint praise.
Too bad. As you said, any REPUTABLE scientist would agree with the stickers. That means anybody who disagrees with them has no business claiming to be a reputable scientist.
To say that "Evolution is just a theory" is to attempt to deceive the audience as to what it means to be "a theory".
Which is better- to claim something might be false, or to insinuate by omission that it is written in stone and cannot be questioned?
I absolutely agree that any good science class will have a clear discussion of what is, and is not, scientific inquiry.
Until we do, then the problem is NOT one of science vs religion, but of two separate groups of fundamentalists taking over the question and fighting.
It is not the place of science to accept or deny those things.
Not normally- no. But the problem is, science as currently being taught (rather disreputably) is denying those things- a group of disreputable fundamentalists has co-opted science classes around the country and is filing lawsuits to *force* science to deny those things.
Science is about observable reality.
No, actually, science is about OBJECTIVE reality- which doesn't really exist, but that's beside the point. Observable reality includes a lot more than objective reality does- every human being sees the world differently, there is no single observable reality.
Anything that is not about observing reality, formulating hypotheses, and attempting to disprove them is not science.
Well, then that includes most reasonable religions- and doesn't include the type of people who would file a lawsuit to censor a cirriculum. Fundamentalists still not included.
Just because you learn about science in science class does not mean science can explain "everything". It's actually a pretty straighforward concept that questions in science class are about things that science can explain, why you have such a problem with it seems quite strange to me.
Funny how you say this, and then start the next bit out with:
That's simple because science is universal.
If science is universal, then it can explain everything in the universe- everything that exists. Only if science is NOT universal can it claim not to explain everything.
We would end up with thousands or even millions of explanations.
I'm not afraid of that. I'm more afraid of the single explaination- that only one way of looking at the world is considered "correct" and all others are excluded.
1) those are at the forefront of science and are usually not teached in school 2) Even if there are competing theories, there are maybe 2 or 3 of them, never hundreds or thousands. 3) Most importantly, unlike religion no theory claims to be "the truth" - it is just an USEFUL explanation of things we measure or see. I say useful, because theories make predictions and those predictions are useful in real life. (Religion on the other hand makes no useful predictions)
Completely correct except for that last- Religion has to make useful predictions, else nobody would choose to believe it. But your #1 and #3 are inherantly contradictory with each other- if you're teaching science, you should teach all the alternatives. And #2 just shows that science is being taught as a reliigion- if it were truly being taught as science, it WOULD have hundreds or thousands of competing theories.
Which would be?
Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton all believed in something called "Natural Philosophy". I contend that the modern scientific method is a corruption of this. A useful corruption possibly- but still a corruption.
"working assumptions" is damning with faint praise, if (according to your definition) an "assumption" is something you take on faith, and never question.
Never questioning denies faith- faith means you're taking a chance on being wrong. That's the basic flaw of fundamentalists of any stripe- science, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, whatever. By not questioning their basic assumptions, no faith is required- it just is truth and you're not going to ever doubt it. The difference between good science and bad science is admiting that there are no facts- only working assumptions- and never stop doubting or questioning them. The key to good religious faith is exactly the same thing- you can be morally certain, but if you ever find yourself being absolutely certain, that's when you get into trouble and start looking at your neighbors as infidels and heretics that only deserve killing.
Scientific "facts" (I think "facts" is a dangerous and misleading terms) are theories that are well-supported by observation, but by definition can and should be disproven with additional data. Science is the process of refining theories to more closely explain and predict observable phenomena. Science is not a set of "facts".
Then you'd have no problem with the disclaimer sticker proposed for textbooks in Kansas. And that's all ID proponents are really asking for- a little less certainty, the removal of fundamentalism. The fact that YEC fundamentalists don't see that ID would be the end of their logically unsupportable interpretation of scripture is just icing on the cake.
Alternate worldviews, beliefs, religions, and faiths have nothing whatsoever to do with science.
Ah, you came so close- science can only be good science if it DOES accept alternate worldviews, beliefs, religions and faiths. The second we start censorship of alternative ideas, is the point we cross the line from good science into bad science.
So your tests in high school covered everything? Dude, you're such a ridiculous troll. Questions on high school science tests that I've seen are simple enough to admit simple yes/no answers. Your response had nothing to do with the post you were responding to. I got points for original thought. I rightly didn't get points for ignorant trolls.
When it comes to the question of whether ID is a science or not, we're talking about teaching it at the high school level. I contend that the "science" taught at the high school level is indeed taught as a religion- completely dogmatic and alternate explainations are not allowed. You may consider that a troll- I consider it entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.
Sure it is. Other explanations are more than welcome.
No, in fact they aren't. ID is an alternate explaination that fits the evidence we have so far in evolution- but it's barred from the classroom BY LAW, and every time anybody comes up with an explaination that challenges the orthodoxy of the textbooks used at a high school level, the result is the same.
A more accurate statement (but still paraphrased) is that, given one or more theories which explain all the observables, you should use the theory which seems simpler until you discover that it doesn't explain all the observables.
Well, I don't know of ANY theory that explains all the observables- observables would include completely subjective things such as religious visions, magical tricks, and apparently supernatural events. ALL these things are OBSERVABLE- and most can't be explained very easily.
What disclaimer is that? "Science class is about science"?
Yep, or to put it another way "Scientific facts are actually working assumptions, and may be disproven with additional data or even by alternate worldviews, beliefs, religions and faiths." Far too many textbooks today treat science as religious, eternal truth and fact, and fail to say that science is just a model of how the world works.
Occam's Razor is false logic; always has been.
In that case, you've lost a huge reason why ID is considered not a science.
The scientific method is not.
I'm not judging whether it is false logic or true logic, only whether it is objectively derived or an assumption. The scientific method is an assumption. It's arguably a very correct and successfull assumption- but it remains an assumption, and thus a belief, a faith.
I.E. there is no academic or scientific reason for the existence of the sticker that can't be better conducted within the text book itself or in texts on the philosophy of science.
But that's the point- many scientific textbooks NEVER deal with the point that scientific facts are actually working assumptions that may be wrong. Thus they are teaching science as a religion- as a certainty instead of as the possibly wrong set of theories that it is.
Religion is faith based. Can we agree on that?
I'll agree on that, because it is central to my argument that science IS a religion.
Now, science most definitely does not take ANYTHING on faith. Sure, we have plenty of axioms. We have the Incompleteness Theorem which says logic is by necessity incomplete-- there just aren't enough proofs to go around. And what does that mean? Does the necessity for axioms mean science has to take things on faith?
YES! If you have an unproven axiom (by definition axioms are unproven and unproveable) you have a belief- and thus faith. Anybody who says different is lying to protect the idea that Science doesn't take anything on faith.
Because science doesn't take anything on faith, it has achieved a truly stunning reputation of accuracy and verifiability.
A totally undeserved reputation- because an axiom has to be taken on faith to be an axiom, and a "working assumption" can never actually be a fact.
I do think there should be a note mentioning it as one of those beliefs commonly accepted in the dark ages that has no place in an enlightened modern society that bases belief in fact rather than picking random mythical figures for which there is no evidence and believing in them because someone told us we "just have to believe".
We've got plenty of other things for which there is no evidence and believe in them simply because someone told us we "just have to believe". Take the principle of not multiplying entities for instance, also known as Occam's razor. It's completely unproven that the simplest answer is always correct- and this has led science astray in the past, most recently with the continental plate drift theory which was denied for half a century merely because it was too complex, despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary. So such a label could be required- but we'd also have to label Occam's Razor and the scientific method itself the same.
Well, to be fair, the scientific use of Occam's razor is typically: "The simplest explanation is most likely the correction one."
Yep- when quite often that is actually NOT the case. But it's a nice dogma to build models upon, and works for the purpose for which it was designed.
Of course as with many things in science, this is actually a PHILOSOPHICAL point, and the "razor" part comes in, because it is actually: "Do not multiply entities unnecessarily."
Yes, but there is a religious belief in this philosophical point- it's used to deny competing theories from damaging the orthodox one.
Typically, if you don't need an intelligent designer to have evolution, then there is no reason to persume one to be there.
Yes, that's what the razor would suggest. But the razor has been wrong in the past, and will be wrong again. We have 10,000 years worth of experiential evidence that an intelligent designer exists- we really need equal experiential evidence to deny one.
Which religions teach that their god[s] most likely do not exist at all and that all of its explanations of the world are most likely totally wrong?
Zen Buddhism teaches this directly- that's the whole point of the Koans. And actually, it just borrowed that philosophy from other eastern religions, and from animism itself, which is the most primative religion that we know about so far.