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originally posted in:Secular Sevens
8/7/2013 8:53:34 PM
16
I think that the two are not mutually exclusive. A scientist can be religious and scientific at the same time, but you just have to be careful that your religious views don't get in the way of science. If an experiment directly contradicts something that the Bible or whatever holy book you claim to be true, you must take a look to see if your interpretation of the holy book is true and accurate, if the passage was speaking in allegorical or metaphorical terms, or if there is any other reason why your interpretation might be wrong. If you have decided inconclusively that a passage 100% contradicts a scientific fact, you need to rethink your world view.
There is nothing wrong with believing something that is inherently unknowable. What I do believe is that the "god of the gaps" has cast a seriously bad reputation on Christianity. Unfortunately, a wide majority of Christians seem to cater to this type of belief. It gives me personally a bad reputation, because people will automatically think that I think like that the second I tell them I'm Christian, even before they get to know me. The Bible tells us that we must learn from nature and heed to its teachings, but many Christians misinterpret these types of passages into this mindset that if we don't know how something works, God must be doing it.
So my bottom line is that yes, they can intertwine, but you must be careful that you are taking everything from an objective point of view, and not letting what others have taught you get in the way of an open mind.
English
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[quote]There is nothing wrong with believing something that is inherently unknowable.[/quote]In the sense that it may not cause you harm, that's possibly true, depending on the specific thing, but it [i]is[/i] an improper thing to do by rational, empirically based standards (ie. those of a scientist).
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Not necessarily. There are some instances in science where you have to assume things. During the conception of chemistry, some scientists had to assume matter was made of small particles (atoms) for their theories to be logically consistent. Only was it later on in the field that they explicitly proved their existence.
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I don't know anything about the history of chemistry (because chemistry is balls), but if observations can't be consistent without a particular thing being true, those observations would count as empirical evidence for that thing.
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Ah, that's true. It appears I've misunderstood your statement. You were explicitly talking about empirical evidence, so that's a mistake on my part.
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Edited by Florence: 8/8/2013 6:22:50 AMSo, let's talk about the Higgs boson. I'm sure we all remember how scientists had reason to believe it existed, but only 'discovered' it about a year ago. But let's talk about why they believed it existed in the first place. Physicists had a model for quantum physics, and it has very near-perfect predictive power and it explains many things. For this reason, it is considered to be a valid scientific model. One aspect of this model was that it involved the existence of a ''Higgs field'' which gives elementary particles their mass. However, the existence of a Higgs field implies the existence of a particle called a Higgs boson, with certain properties. Since this model is such a good one, this gave reason to believe that the Higgs boson exists, even though it had not yet been discovered. And then, of course, a particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson was discovered. Going by what you said, the scenario is very similar in your example. Scientists had models which made accurate predictions about our observations, and these models also predicted the existence of atoms, therefore atoms were assumed to exist. So, to be clear: these assumptions are still grounded in empirical evidence, even if they may not have been conclusively proven; they are predicted by models which very accurately predict observations, and we therefore have good reason to make these assumptions. If you can assume God exists in a similar manner, I'd be very interested to hear your reasoning.
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Oh no, I'm an atheist. I was just arguing the fact that sometimes in science, you can't always rely on empirical evidence to complete or validate a theory. Maybe someone can argue the existence of god given our examples, however I am not qualified to do so.
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If we take 'theory' to mean scientific theory, then I'd say by definition they'd based on empirical evidence. But I agree that plenty of truths, such as those in metaphysics and ethics, are not based on empirical evidence, but on pure reason or what have you (and that seems to be what you were getting at).
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So the fact that we can't yet prove that a parallel universe exists means that we can't believe it's true?
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No, you can, you can believe anything, but a reasonable person shouldn't.
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So what you're telling me is that any scientist who thinks that a parallel universe could possibly exist is being unreasonable?
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Edited by Seggi: 8/8/2013 3:23:25 PMNo, any scientist who believes that a 'parallel universe' exists is. You know, the thing that I actually said?
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Then I guess Stephen Hawking must be unreasonable for believing the String Theory to be true, considering that we have yet to find any substantial evidence in favor of it.
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That would be unreasonable, if he actually did.
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Well he does, and he actually dedicated an entire portion of his book to a new theory called the "M" theory that bases its entire foundation on the string theory. So congratulations. We've established that the single smartest person alive is unreasonable.
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Talking about the possibility of it and what that might entail isn't the same thing as believing in it. Also, this isn't really relevant, but Stephen Hawking isn't the single smartest person alive, he's just the most well known living physicist.
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You shouldn't accept it as truth, no... Why would you if it isn't a substantiated possibility?
