Criticism of Modern Science

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Geremia said:
I do not doubt that science has lead to technology. What I am asking is: Is this its only purpose or can it lead us to knowledge of objective, unchanging truths?
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Yes, it can lead us to knowledge of objective unchanging truths, under this condition. It has to be accepted that there are questions that are impossible for anyone or anything to answer. There are questions that simply do not have an answer.
So you are saying that science has only a utilitarian purpose? Would you deny modern science can help one understand God better? If so, then wouldn’t you have to deny that modern science cannot lead one to at least some absolute truths?
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I would say that understanding God is impossible because there is nothing there to understand. God is a delusion, a figment of our imaginations, a personification of our hopes, our doubts and our fears. To understand God we have to understand our own shortcomings and limitations.
 
buffalo said:
:rotfl:

The baloney detector goes sky high every time this bs is posted. Whoever is feeding you this nonsense should stop.
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Would you care to explain, or am I take this on faith?

Monotheists are very fond of telling me that I will be denied access to the kingdom of God when my time comes. Well, as a man of science, I think that should cut both ways. Why should people who deny science and try to pervert science and have it banned from classrooms be allowed access to the products of science?

I would actually support the policy that people who deny the validity of Biological Science should be denied access to modern medicine. We’d soon see how long they adhered to their preposterous and indefensible position then.

And why should people who deny the validity of physics be vouchsafed computers and LASER beams and automobiles? Let them walk to work in the rain.
 
Geremia said:
By the way, just because I ask this question does not mean I believe science is futile. Far from it. I ask because I want to know what its opponents think of it.
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Ah, apologies, forgive me. 😊

Perhaps your research can help me with something that puzzles me greatly. My question is slightly different – how is this “science bad” mantra of some on CAF (I don’t see it in any of my real life Catholic friends) different from any other conspiracy theory about an amorphous undefined “them”?

Is it about the natural sciences or does it include social sciences and mathematics? Does it mean the methodology, the body of knowledge, the technological products or just the possible philosophical implications of some work? Is it basic research or does it include applied sciences like engineering and medical science?

For that matter every time we cook a sauce, taste it and decide next time to change the ingredients slightly to see if it can be improved, we’re using a simple version of the scientific method. Are we all included in “them” or is this just about the professionals?

I’ve tried for answers but never got anything you could hang your hat on. What exactly is meant by “science”? How exactly should it or we change? What exactly will be gained? How would the change be accomplished worldwide? And the bottom line, how does all this joyless carping bring souls to Christ rather than turn them away? :confused:
 
AntiTheist said:
Posting a message that suggests that modern science is “a futile attempt at seeking knowledge” on messageboard on the internet, by means of a computer, is something that would almost certainly cause an irony meter to break…should an irony meter ever be designed by a scientist.
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heheheheheh 😛
 
Moonstruck888 said:
Observe → Hypothesise → Experiment → Repeat.

It’s not complicated.
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Which is one of the things I’m asking - do those who criticize science even understand the basics, which bit would they change and so on.

As Lawrence Krauss said “What you take from [science] depends upon your religious and metaphysical beliefs … [but] the universe is the way it is whether we like it or not.”
 
inocente said:
Which is one of the things I’m asking - do those who criticize science even understand the basics, which bit would they change and so on.

As Lawrence Krauss said “What you take from [science] depends upon your religious and metaphysical beliefs … [but] the universe is the way it is whether we like it or not.”
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Indeed. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, but not their own facts.
 
Moonstruck888 said:
Would you care to explain, or am I take this on faith?

Monotheists are very fond of telling me that I will be denied access to the kingdom of God when my time comes. Well, as a man of science, I think that should cut both ways. Why should people who deny science and try to pervert science and have it banned from classrooms be allowed access to the products of science?

I would actually support the policy that people who deny the validity of Biological Science should be denied access to modern medicine. We’d soon see how long they adhered to their preposterous and indefensible position then.

And why should people who deny the validity of physics be vouchsafed computers and LASER beams and automobiles? Let them walk to work in the rain.
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Listen to yourself. You sound like a whining child. Are you at all interested in the truth?

No one, I repeat, no one denies properly reasoned science.
 
reggieM said:
Great question. I wish more responses would stay on topic instead of seeking to debate something.

I’d recommend this book:

Why Us? by James Le Fanu.

The author offers a subtle and devastating critique of the dehumanizing and arrogant attempt by science to over-reach its authority (science is actually the study of the superficial aspects of reality, not the deeper questions).

I will vote that book as one of the best of the 21st century so far.

There are several others – of course, they will be hated and ridiculed from the usual sources. But that only proves how important this topic really is.

Anyone who thinks that science is the primary, or worse only, means of valid knowledge has truly lost sight of the value and mystery (and meaning) of life. It’s a blindness to the philosophical assumptions which are necessary before even knowing what science is.
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Thanks for the reference, I’ll be buying this book today… Sounds like a good read. 🙂
 
Geremia said:
What is a good book that criticizes modern science and considers it a futile attempt at seeking knowledge?
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Why on earth would you want to do that? It isn’t a futile attempt to seek knowledge, and if it were, then the Church would not encourage people to engage in it. The name itself, “science,” comes from the Latin word that means “knowledge.” All science is (and when we say that we mean “natural science”) is a means for attaining knowledge about the natural world. The Church never criticizes modern science when it is properly exercised within its epistemological boundaries. If it did, then Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaitre, and Copernicus would never have been held in the esteem that they are, nor even permitted to do their work–they were all scientists, and they were all Catholic priests. Faith and reason do not contradict one another, but are complementary. Read John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio for more on this. To abandon natural science in favor of only faith is to commit the error of fideism.

-ACEGC
 
edward_george said:
Why on earth would you want to do that? It isn’t a futile attempt to seek knowledge, and if it were, then the Church would not encourage people to engage in it. The name itself, “science,” comes from the Latin word that means “knowledge.” All science is (and when we say that we mean “natural science”) is a means for attaining knowledge about the natural world. The Church never criticizes modern science when it is properly exercised within its epistemological boundaries. If it did, then Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaitre, and Copernicus would never have been held in the esteem that they are, nor even permitted to do their work–they were all scientists, and they were all Catholic priests. Faith and reason do not contradict one another, but are complementary. Read John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio for more on this. To abandon natural science in favor of only faith is to commit the error of fideism.

-ACEGC
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Sorry to intrude, but I think the OP is referring to issue of societys “over-reliance” on science, and it’s effects in philosophy.

**John Paul II **Fides et Ratio

"Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated instead upon human knowing. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned.

This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism and relativism which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread scepticism."
 
Geremia said:
I don’t understand you; please elaborate. Thanks
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The test of Reality or of Truth is that it does not change. So God is solely the Absolute Truth. In the physical universe there was a “time,” according to our understanding of the big bang, that the forces we “know” as the em forces and gravity had not separated. So in a way we can say that even gravity isn’t a constant, though for our daily needs it most certainly is. What I’m saying is that in the relative world, things are relative and we act by the facts we know, incomplete as they are. This may be why, as someone said, earlier, that we can have our own opinions, but we can’t have our own facts.

Another idea relevant to this is that religion and science both exist as thought paradigms in our minds. I read a lot of the pages available on line of Why Us? It is a wonderful example of how a lot of knowledge can be put together very logically in many ways, and it raises some important questions, particularly about how we got here and about the “ghost in the machine.” And on page 22 it becomes quite clear where the author is going with the thesis of the book. Frankly, he leaves a lot out. I much prefer Ken Wilbur’s A Brief History of Everything when considering these issues.

I prefer it for a reason very important to me, which fits with the idea of relative knowledge. You see. by the point I read to in Mr. Le Fanu’s work, there are some critical points regarding human awareness and it’s context that should have been, or better, could have been, included, particularly about our understanding of where religion and science both take place, a factor which in a sense makes them equal. It also makes them relative to a more fundamental factor which is generally discounted, especially from the standpoint of studying this matter from within the frame work of Christianity.

That’s all I can say right now; I have to leave for an appointment. More later if you wish.
 
reggieM said:
Anyone who thinks that science is the primary, or worse only, means of valid knowledge has truly lost sight of the value and mystery (and meaning) of life. It’s a blindness to the philosophical assumptions which are necessary before even knowing what science is.
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You might be interested in this article by the mathematician Wolfgang Smith: “The plague of scientistic belief.”
 
Moonstruck888 said:
Would you care to explain, or am I take this on faith?

Monotheists are very fond of telling me that I will be denied access to the kingdom of God when my time comes. Well, as a man of science, I think that should cut both ways. Why should people who deny science and try to pervert science and have it banned from classrooms be allowed access to the products of science?.
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I disagree.
Moonstruck888 said:
I would actually support the policy that people who deny the validity of Biological Science should be denied access to modern medicine. We’d soon see how long they adhered to their preposterous and indefensible position then.
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Hahaha. You sound like Stuey from Family Guy… 😃 :rotfl:
Moonstruck888 said:
And why should people who deny the validity of physics be vouchsafed computers and LASER beams and automobiles? Let them walk to work in the rain.
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Hahaha. :rotfl:
 
I hope you make it to heaven, and myself as well.

Science, today, deserves strenuous criticism because it has not corrected its wayward members who use it to bludgeon the religious. Who turn it into an idol to be denied to those who don’t give it proper reverence.

At one time, I experienced a sense of wonder and excitement about science, now it is sometimes used as a weapon in a false class warfare. I pray that the covering of materialism that covers science today is removed and that the cloud of bitterness is dispelled.

God bless,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Science, today, deserves strenuous criticism because it has not corrected its wayward members who use it to bludgeon the religious. Who turn it into an idol to be denied to those who don’t give it proper reverence.

Ed
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So you can see how unethical exclusive religion is?

Science is not a moral or ethical code. It is simply a method of testing how a the predictions of a hypothesis compare to physical experience.

A scientist has no jurisdiction over other scientists, nor over anyone else who is not directly involved in his experiments.
 
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