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tonyrey
Guest
It seems obvious that science cannot justify or explain itself. Do you agree or disagree?
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trmyjs
Guest
Agree. There are so many things that science will never be able to explain.
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Robert_Sock
Guest
Science is a scam. To think that our technology come from earthly science is absurd.
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DianaCC
Guest
I agree, but for a special reason. “Sciences”, in the general sense of the word (lumping together things like math, chemistry, and ethics), do not prove their own principles. I’m sure you remember “axioms” and “theorems” from high school geometry. “Axioms” were mathematical statements that do not have proofs and which cannot be proven but are taken to be true anyway, but “theorems” you had to prove for homework. You cannot prove “axioms” from within the science of geometry; you have to go to the science of metaphysics. In the same way you cannot use chemical experiments to prove the principles of chemistry; the explanation of how electrons work in atoms and molecules comes from the science of physics, not from within chemistry. In ethics you can prove that murder is wrong, but what *makes *right right and wrong wrong has to come from outside ethics, because ethics takes the rightness of right and the wrongness of wrong for granted. In any science you have to start somewhere.
When people say they believe science over religion they usually have no idea what they’re talking about. They usually mean something like “Religion says there’s a God, but unless you show me God in a test tube I won’t believe he exists”. But what they don’t realize is that there is no “scientific experiment” that proves that “scientific experiments” are a way to know anything. It’s just an excuse to disbelieve what is morally inconvenient.
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Luke_K
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“Science” at its most fundamental level is the only thing that we have to make sense of the world we live in. It is simply objective observation of specific events, from which we form general principles to apply to similar situations in the future. For example, when you look in the sky and see dark clouds forming, you predict that it is going to rain based on your past experiences of that situation. THAT is science. Modern science is just the disciplined development of objective observation coupled with the use of mathematical models.
What justification does science need? There is absolutely no other way to make sense of our world. Perhaps you are conflating science with materialism.
What justification does science need? There is absolutely no other way to make sense of our world. Perhaps you are conflating science with materialism.
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AF_Fugue
Guest
I am in full agreement with Luke K. It is important to remember what science is, and what it is not. Science is simply the application of reason (a gift from God) to the physical world in an attempt to explain and predict natural phenomena. It should also be noted that all science, like mathematics, is based on a set of axioms (as mentioned above) that are human-defined and must be accepted as true before you can proceed. You are free, however, to reject axioms or develop new ones, in which case you are simply defining a different “kind” of science or math. This can be most obviously seen in the field of geometry. Euclidian geometry (which is what we all learned in school) is based on a set of axioms, one of which is “parallel lines never intersect.” If you reject this assumption, however, and allow for the intersection of parallel lines, you get a different system of geometry, known as Non-Euclidian. It turns out that Non-Euclidian geometry greatly simplifies calculations performed on surfaces that are not flat – like a globe. Without Non-Euclidian geometry, it would be much more difficult to calculate, for example, the shortest path for an airplane flying half-way around the world. Thus,the axioms chosen for any given model are generally chosen because they are the most convenient for explaning our observations.
Now, back to the subject at hand. Based on the Scientific Method, all good scientific theories must be falsifiable. This brings us to what science is NOT. Science has no business investigating hypotheses that are, by definition, unfalsifiable. A prime example is the existance of God. There is no experiment that can prove that God does NOT exist, therefore science simply has no place in the discussion. (Note that I define a Scientific experiment as one that has observable and reproduceable results, therefore “Thought Experiments” do not count.
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The final conclusion that I have come to is that science and religion can never be in conflict for two reasons. 1) They generally address completely separate issues and rarely intersect. 2) On the rare occassion that they intersect, there can be no conflict because both Faith and Reason are both gifts from God. (If they appear to conflict, then someone is wrong.)
Now, back to the subject at hand. Based on the Scientific Method, all good scientific theories must be falsifiable. This brings us to what science is NOT. Science has no business investigating hypotheses that are, by definition, unfalsifiable. A prime example is the existance of God. There is no experiment that can prove that God does NOT exist, therefore science simply has no place in the discussion. (Note that I define a Scientific experiment as one that has observable and reproduceable results, therefore “Thought Experiments” do not count.
)The final conclusion that I have come to is that science and religion can never be in conflict for two reasons. 1) They generally address completely separate issues and rarely intersect. 2) On the rare occassion that they intersect, there can be no conflict because both Faith and Reason are both gifts from God. (If they appear to conflict, then someone is wrong.
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tonyrey
Guest
I agree but it cannot make sense of the persons who create science!
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tonyrey
Guest
Welcome to the forum! I agree with you but atheists like Dawkins claim science has made religion superfluous with its explanation of the origin of life and human beings.I am in full agreement with Luke K. It is important to remember what science is, and what it is not. Science is simply the application of reason (a gift from God) to the physical world in an attempt to explain and predict natural phenomena. It should also be noted that all science, like mathematics, is based on a set of axioms (as mentioned above) that are human-defined and must be accepted as true before you can proceed. You are free, however, to reject axioms or develop new ones, in which case you are simply defining a different “kind” of science or math. This can be most obviously seen in the field of geometry. Euclidian geometry (which is what we all learned in school) is based on a set of axioms, one of which is “parallel lines never intersect.” If you reject this assumption, however, and allow for the intersection of parallel lines, you get a different system of geometry, known as Non-Euclidian. It turns out that Non-Euclidian geometry greatly simplifies calculations performed on surfaces that are not flat – like a globe. Without Non-Euclidian geometry, it would be much more difficult to calculate, for example, the shortest path for an airplane flying half-way around the world. Thus,the axioms chosen for any given model are generally chosen because they are the most convenient for explaining our observations.
Now, back to the subject at hand. Based on the Scientific Method, all good scientific theories must be falsifiable. This brings us to what science is NOT. Science has no business investigating hypotheses that are, by definition, unfalsifiable. A prime example is the existence of God. There is no experiment that can prove that God does NOT exist, therefore science simply has no place in the discussion. (Note that I define a Scientific experiment as one that has observable and reproducible results, therefore “Thought Experiments” do not count.
The final conclusion that I have come to is that science and religion can never be in conflict for two reasons. 1) They generally address completely separate issues and rarely intersect. 2) On the rare occasion that they intersect, there can be no conflict because both Faith and Reason are both gifts from God. (If they appear to conflict, then someone is wrong.
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praxising
Guest
Dawkins doesn’t speak for the whole scientific community, even though he’d like to believe so. There are many Christian, and other theists, who are also scientists. Even paleoanthropologists.
You know, this definition of science as the study of the natural world is a new definition, it’s a common use that’s sprung up in the last century. Dictionaries don’t actually tell us what words mean, they tell us what people mean by the words when they use them. So what definitions appear first, (most common use) changes over time as cultures evolve.
This is from an online site:
Theology is also, properly, a science. Note “facts or truths” or “principles” in the bolded part. Those who study the natural world have, over time, distanced themselves from religion is order to be able to objectively pursue knowledge without interference from churches. Galileo is probably the classic example.
Those who pursue knowledge and truth, aren’t themselves necessarily objective. (see: Dawkins or any Creationist)
meltzerboy
New member
Without addressing for now the gist of your argument, I notice you included ethics in the category of science. I know ethics is a branch of philosophy. Do you regard philosophy as science?
meltzerboy
New member
Where do you think our technology comes from?
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Robert_Sock
Guest
Not from earthly science, that’s for sure. Technology comes from an upper-world we are unaware of. We must give God credit for all technology. Again, science is a sham.
Ecclesiastes 1:2-11: Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun? . . . That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, “See this, it is new”? Already it has existed for ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things, and also of the later things which will occur; there will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.
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DianaCC
Guest
Yes. It has principles and methods like any other science. But unlike physical sciences, in philosophy you don’t start with the conclusions and work backwards to the principles but start with the principles arrived at by intuition and work out the conclusions.
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tonyrey
Guest
I agree. Objectivity seems a rare phenomenon if we are to go by the scientific Establishment…
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honestquestions
Guest
Do you acknowledge or do you not that someone made that same comment in the year 1400? Well, they got owned. You will too in a couple hundred years from now.
It’s quite obvious that your comment is portraying that science cannot answer before the big bang, therefore god. In other words, what we do not yet understand, therefore god is the answer. Unfortunately, this answer gets owned more and more every year since all recorded history.
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warpspeedpetey
Guest
I agree. Questions of science are preceded in the logical order by questions of being.
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Filippo_Bruno
Guest
“By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” – Matthew 7:16
Personally I like my antibiotics and semiconductors.
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praxising
Guest
Well, it wasn’t obvious to me!
Do you acknowledge or do you not that someone made that same comment in the year 1400? Well, they got owned. You will too in a couple hundred years from now.
It’s quite obvious that your comment is portraying that science cannot answer before the big bang, therefore god. In other words, what we do not yet understand, therefore god is the answer. Unfortunately, this answer gets owned more and more every year since all recorded history.
Careful, you might get powned urself when Big Bang theory becomes a quaint past notion of out-of-date scientists in another generation or two.Someplace around here is a thread titled “miracle.” The thing about them is, they seem to defy Newtonian physics. (I thought that’s what he meant. We might both be wrong.) You could bring quantum physics into play here, but it still won’t explain anything. By the time “science” explains the unexplainable, we won’t need it. It’ll just be the new Reality.
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levinas12
Guest
I agree if you mean science as most people understand it, e.g., physics, chemistry, biology, etc . What these sciences cannot explain is “truth” itself.
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tonyrey
Guest
Which many scientists ignore!
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