How will Religion cope???

[trish]

Originally Posted by PomonaCA Just give her time to talk. It's obvious she has the disease of liberalism. You'll see her cite some study or quote in order to justify her opinion. The problem is that the no matter how peer reviewed, the studies are only scientific opinion, nothing more because sciences KNOWS little yet you guys worship it.

Oh my, I might cite a paper that details an experiment and reports on the result. And then I might goof and cite a dozen or so other papers that report on attempts to reproduce the original result. Can't have that. After all, the tenets of science are "only scientific opinion." Take conservation of mass-energy, for example. Even though various versions of the principle had been in use during the eighteenth century, it hadn't been fully developed until the nineteenth century. It took until then for it to become "scientific opinion." It had to be revised in the twentieth century to accommodate special relativity. It's still difficult to interpret in some general relativistic settings. It has not yet been tested at Planck scales. Who knows if it will hold in that domain? Never mind that engineers, architects and doctors as well as physicists and chemists and biologists seem to find it applicable. Those are just liberal types who are simply too stupid to realize prayer is all you need to build a bridge or manufacture a MRI machine. Science is just politics. Special relativity is an outright Jewish deceit (or so the Nazi's tell us); and the conservation of energy is something that liberals cite when they try to argue that if more energy strikes the Earth each day than can radiate away, the excess heat energy will begin to accumulate. Citing the first principle of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy) is an act of communism, pure and simple. It's an attempt to establish a one world government.

Sorry to disappoint you hippiefried, as you can see, I gave up and joined the other side. Praise the lord.

[hippifried]

The rapture is upon us! My girl has seen fit to partake of the poison tea! I guess I knew things were about to get topsy turvy as soon as that godless commie scientist managed to kill Pluto.

Oh well. It's a good thing God invented those nukes to get us to the end of days.

[yodajazz]

Oh my, I might cite a paper that details an experiment and reports on the result. And then I might goof and cite a dozen or so other papers that report on attempts to reproduce the original result. Can't have that. After all, the tenets of science are "only scientific opinion." Take conservation of mass-energy, for example. Even though various versions of the principle had been in use during the eighteenth century, it hadn't been fully developed until the nineteenth century. It took until then for it to become "scientific opinion." It had to be revised in the twentieth century to accommodate special relativity. It's still difficult to interpret in some general relativistic settings. It has not yet been tested at Planck scales. Who knows if it will hold in that domain? Never mind that engineers, architects and doctors as well as physicists and chemists and biologists seem to find it applicable. Those are just liberal types who are simply too stupid to realize prayer is all you need to build a bridge or manufacture a MRI machine. Science is just politics. Special relativity is an outright Jewish deceit (or so the Nazi's tell us); and the conservation of energy is something that liberals cite when they try to argue that if more energy strikes the Earth each day than can radiate away, the excess heat energy will begin to accumulate. Citing the first principle of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy) is an act of communism, pure and simple. It's an attempt to establish a one world government.

Sorry to disappoint you hippiefried, as you can see, I gave up and joined the other side. Praise the lord.

As much as I disagree with PomonaCA on other issues. I think that he could have use the concept of 'faith' rather than worship. That is to say that some of what science believes to be facts, are only theories. But we have faith that these theories are correct. There could possibly some scientific discoverys that would turn our views of important things on its head. I'm not saying that science is not basing theories on solid evidence, however. Its just to say that we all have some kind of faith in things that we have not proved for ourselves.

[yodajazz]

Just give her time to talk. It's obvious she has the disease of liberalism. You'll see her cite some study or quote in order to justify her opinion. The problem is that the no matter how peer reviewed, the studies are only scientific opinion, nothing more because sciences KNOWS little yet you guys worship it.

This is off topic, but when did "liberalism" become a disease? I see this type of thinking as a sign of serious brainwashing. No wonder our nation is going downhill. Some people can no longer see a nation where people are equal, but have differing opinions. Someone who disagrees with the views of Glen Beck, is now diseased? The word 'liberal' is now only a coded brainwashed term, so associated with negatve terms, that are not related at all to being liberal. I can tell the signs of those people that used those coded terms. And they are trained to defy logical information. Their masters tell them that facts, come from the liberal media.

But after some thought this does relate some to the original topic. Control is not the domain of religion. You have a whole group of people in the US today, who are being controled by media masters, tied to political agenda. They do sometimes use religious trappings, but its more about classical brainwashing through repetition. To make myself clear, I'm talking about the Rush Limbaughs, etc. Once people are convinced not to see others as human, their leaders have complete control, even to take away those 'non-human' lives.

[muhmuh]

That is to say that some of what science believes to be facts, are only theories.

that just shows a complete and fundamental lack of knowing the first thing about science ie the lingo
in science a theory is basically the word used for what the great unwashed would call a scientific fact

[circ]

No, a theory is just that, a theory. It is superseded by fact when that becomes available, but you won't hear about that because you're not a scientist or don't bother reading. Let me give you an example of a theory that is however taken as fact. There is no mention of dinosaurs in the bible. Yet somehow creationists and ID advocates take the theory of man co-existing with dinosaurs, 6000 years ago, as fact. They completely ignore carbon dating and other scientific methods of dating. And it's not even a scientific theory, there are no experiments conducted, no use of logic or reason, nothing. Just made up things. This is called faith, or retardation.

[trish]

That is to say that some of what science believes to be facts, are only theories. But we have faith that these theories are correct. There could possibly some scientific discoverys that would turn our views of important things on its head. I'm not saying that science is not basing theories on solid evidence, however. Its just to say that we all have some kind of faith in things that we have not proved for ourselves.

Actually I don't think our differences here are all that great. I wouldn't say that scientists have faith that their theories are correct. In this context I have more difficulty with the word "correct" than the word "faith", though I would use neither. I prefer "expectation" and "accurate." E.g.: if a theory is widely accepted it is because the preponderance of evidence warrants the expectation (faith?) that the theory provides an accurate description of the phenomena (is correct?) within its domain of application.

The distinction between fact and theory can be a tricky one. The most controversial fact/theory dispute is of course the one about evolution. Many biologists will take the stance that evolution is a fact and "natural selection acting through phenotypes on randomly mutable gene pools" is a theory that attempts to account for the fact.

Putting this dispute aside, in most cases the distinction between fact and theory is reasonably straightforward. I suppose you could say it's a theory that if you carefully measure the radiation in any skyward direction you will find in the microwave bandwidth a blackbody distribution of about 3.5 +/- 1.5K. It is, however, a fact that this experiment has been performed (by robotic satellites) hundreds of thousands of times and have come up with readings in that range each time. Based on the experimental evidence, I'm comfortable with saying it's a fact, not a theory, that we're immersed in a blackbody distribution of microwave radiation with a temperature in that range. One theory that predicted this fact is George Gamow's theory of the early stages of cosmic expansion.

What is provisional here and what is not? Certainly Gamow's theory is provisional. The combined data on these microwave measurements is much less provisional. In the future someone might discover valid reasons to question some of the measurements. Perhaps someone discovers that during one series of measurements an antenna was not properly calibrated. Perhaps one series of measurements is subject to the charge of fraud. So even facts are sometimes subject to further investigation and are in this sense provisional.

Every argument ultimately rests upon a set of premises. In science the premises are either measurements (e.g. the described device gave a reading of 3.3K in the microwave band etc.), or they are hypothesis whose consequences are to be tested (e.g. the horizon of last scattering was 250 000 years after nucleosynthesis). I'm not sure there's anything here I would call faith. I've certain expectations. I expect colleagues act in good faith when conducting and reporting their work. I expect experimental evidence will fit with well accepted theory. When it doesn't, one double checks the veracity of the evidence (how was it collected? when? under what circumstances). If the troublesome evidence passes this inspection, then one tries to reproduce it. If it can't be reproduced then there's probably not sufficient warrant to toss out or modify the theory. If independent labs can reproduce the evidence, then we start looking at the theory. Is it simply being misapplied? Does it require modification? Are the required modifications too ad hoc? Is there a theory that does better? Etc. etc.

If you are merely asserting that "faith" in science is synonymous with these sorts of "expectations" and that scientists are more or less willing, when warranted, to revise their "faith" and sometimes toss it out entirely, then we have no substantial dispute...just a difference in word preference. The sticky point here is that often "faith" is thought of something that one persists in even when all evidence is against it.

[hippifried]

It's all theory. But at least a theory is based on evidence. If someone thinks they have an alternative, just present the evidence. That's not what's happening. It's just an attack from those with no ideas.

This is off topic, but when did "liberalism" become a disease? ~Yodajazz~

In the 1980s, there was a concerted propaganda effort to memetically equate liberalism with communism. That's when it happened. What made it possible was the refusal of liberals to refute it. There was a lost decade where all the moise came from the right. The same thing happened to conservatism, at the same time, but without the vitriol. Conservatives got rebranded as right wing. The more extreme or even fanatical & reactionary someone was on the right, the more "conservative" they were. The reality is/was that there's nothing conservative about trying to change the national mindset to one of intolerance. We allowed a handful of fanatic loudmouths to completely dominate the national debate. It victimized everybody of all bents, & it's taken another 2 decades just to start talking again. This is why I don't want the left doing the exact same thing.

What so many adherents of the loudmouths don't seem to realize, with all the revisionism that's happened, is that everything we consider conservative traditions today began as a liberal idea that started a big fight. In the end, liberalism always wins out. If it didn't, we'd still be serfs, under the thumb of some asshole just because of who's sperm went where.

[PomonaCA]

Oh my, I might cite a paper that details an experiment and reports on the result. And then I might goof and cite a dozen or so other papers that report on attempts to reproduce the original result. Can't have that. After all, the tenets of science are "only scientific opinion." Take conservation of mass-energy, for example. Even though various versions of the principle had been in use during the eighteenth century, it hadn't been fully developed until the nineteenth century. It took until then for it to become "scientific opinion." It had to be revised in the twentieth century to accommodate special relativity. It's still difficult to interpret in some general relativistic settings. It has not yet been tested at Planck scales. Who knows if it will hold in that domain? Never mind that engineers, architects and doctors as well as physicists and chemists and biologists seem to find it applicable. Those are just liberal types who are simply too stupid to realize prayer is all you need to build a bridge or manufacture a MRI machine. Science is just politics. Special relativity is an outright Jewish deceit (or so the Nazi's tell us); and the conservation of energy is something that liberals cite when they try to argue that if more energy strikes the Earth each day than can radiate away, the excess heat energy will begin to accumulate. Citing the first principle of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy) is an act of communism, pure and simple. It's an attempt to establish a one world government.

Sorry to disappoint you hippiefried, as you can see, I gave up and joined the other side. Praise the lord.

That entire post was ramble on. I think you had 1 solid point in there, not that I agree with it, but when you said "those are just liberal types....". That part made sense, you're wrong, but at least it was coherent. And you've illustrated another liberal tactic, 'ridiculous exaggeration'. No one claims that prayer solves everything so your straw man tactics are fail again. Science is valuable, but it's only science. Once you understand that, my dear, the doors to the universe open up for you. You bow to science as if it's some kind of God and that's where you fail. It's only science. Calm down.

The rest of your paragraph was you using the same language that you worship. Derivative drivel. You're talking for the sake of talking.

[hippifried]

See Trish? Another Alinsky tactic. "Projection". They describe the things that are wrong with themselves to attack someone else. The tactics work on the stupid & gullible. How do you think he got brainwashed like that? Alinsky didn't make this shit up. It was old hat when he started as a radical. He just wrote it all down in a clear & concise manner. Most people had never heard of Saul Alinsky until these bozos started droping his name constantly & claiming that everybody but them was folowing him like sheep. This latest aspect of the lunatic fringe right is everything we were told to beware of from the commies during the cold war.