Anti-Science views?

[Xenryusho]

Science has become a fad and tool by bigoted, ignorant and demagoguery. Too often used by narcissist and stupid polluting a valuable tool for human progress.

I feel that way because I see science being made into fad and political weapon.

Issue is that people need something to blindly believe in to the point of fanaticism. It never really had to be a god, as evident by the hordes of fashionable science fans who will unquestioningly parrot anything that they (usually wrongly) think of as 'science'. It couldn't matter less to them how flawed the methodology was, how biased and/or contrary to the findings their conclusion was, or how incapable the rest of the scientific community was to reproduce the results. If they see something they think proves their point they'll cherry pick it and scream at dissenters that they're antiscience, antiprogress, biblethumpers, etc, etc. Completely oblivious to the fact that their behavior epitomizes the very thing they yell at others about.

Honestly it hurts science more than anything to have these harpies shrieking not to have doubts. How long was it being published (in the freaking lancet for that matter) that beriberi, pellagra, and scurvy were infectious despite the growing number of researchers throwing their doubts in. Same situation with SMON. Not to mention great upsets like the death of Newtonian (read: classic) physics or gettier cases. These fields require dissent and the ability to share contrary findings.

[Sauronxyz]

Yes I do. My faith in God and Jesus. Seeing how I won't live long enough to discover and learn everything there is to know about the universe, I won't pretend that science has given us all the answers. Science is full of scientific THEORIES. My ego isn't big enough to think I know it all.

[Deathcries]

No.

/10chars

except for male and female biologoical views. Other then that science unless it's a liberal view is okay.

[weedburst]

Science has become a religion.

hmmmm... i mean, i guess science changes as we learn more, and so do religions to try to stay relevant(and make that fucking money, as they love to do)... kind of a stretch outside of that.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Issue is that people need something to blindly believe in to the point of fanaticism. It never really had to be a god, as evident by the hordes of fashionable science fans who will unquestioningly parrot anything that they (usually wrongly) think of as 'science'. It couldn't matter less to them how flawed the methodology was, how biased and/or contrary to the findings their conclusion was, or how incapable the rest of the scientific community was to reproduce the results. If they see something they think proves their point they'll cherry pick it and scream at dissenters that they're antiscience, antiprogress, biblethumpers, etc, etc. Completely oblivious to the fact that their behavior epitomizes the very thing they yell at others about.

Honestly it hurts science more than anything to have these harpies shrieking not to have doubts. How long was it being published (in the freaking lancet for that matter) that beriberi, pellagra, and scurvy were infectious despite the growing number of researchers throwing their doubts in. Same situation with SMON. Not to mention great upsets like the death of Newtonian (read: classic) physics or gettier cases. These fields require dissent and the ability to share contrary findings.

Exactly well put. What you said will go over the heads of most and be interpreted one way or another missing the entire point.

Hey I love and enjoy science but I admit so much that I don't know and concede of facts even when I wish it wasn't. That isn't boasts.

I'm not humble and at times I'm unsure but I admit it for my own sake because passion can lead astray objective perspective.

It's fine to be in wonder of science but to view it more or less than it is does damage. Watch the eyes of wonder of someone when they light up in wonder for science. Then watch those same eyes when it comes to uncomfortable truth or the realization that science is hard tedious and sometimes boring. Especially if you made up in your mind anything.

Science is a process and a tool for which systems have developed over years if lots of failure and some powerful success.

But it is a decipline also one if misused leads to stupidity and ignorance. Which is why I don't like the trends I see. The same people wrong about everything else and learn nothing adopting science as a fad in the same way.

[RaoBurning]

Yes I do. My faith in God and Jesus. Seeing how I won't live long enough to discover and learn everything there is to know about the universe, I won't pretend that science has given us all the answers. Science is full of scientific THEORIES. My ego isn't big enough to think I know it all.

Hey, it's that word people misuse all the goddamned time again. Really should just put that link in my sig or something. Also, the folks claiming unassailable universal truth tend not to be the scientists.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Hey, it's that word people misuse all the goddamned time again. Really should just put that link in my sig or something. Also, the folks claiming unassailable universal truth tend not to be the scientists.

Right it's not theory in the way he stated and isn't an absolute. It is a practical application based on our best evidence so far as proof period.

It can be questioned but only with evidence of fact.

Opinions are fine they just don't constitute fact.


Doesn't mean opinions don't have value just not at all the same as a fact.

[Perkunas]

I honestly can't fathom how creationists still exist in 2017. It boggles my mind that people in a civilized country in the modern era could still be bound to that mythology. Lack of education, indoctrination, denial, bad parenting, corrupt politicians trying to chisel away at the separation of church and state... All I can guess.

[Vankrys]

you guys are personifying science as if it is a living thing, a spirit or a religion.

Science is an abstract concept that summarize human endeavor to understand the world. It's just a method. It's not religion, it does not need believing just to apply the method.

What people are believing in are the data, the results, the explanations of said physical phenomena.
Why are most people believe in those it's simply because as in so far the method has proven fruitful and reliable. The method is flexible, the explanations of the phenomena evolve as better data and better theory comes along and the method has self check in place to ensure errors are caught and rectified.

Science is not a religion. A religion is unchangeable, fixed. A religion is set by its scripture or traditions and will actively resist against change, against refinement or elimination of what is obsolete. A religion is the total opposite to science. Science does not promise truth or certitude, science is only the search, the method.

What i see in the comments above me is the refusal of scientific theory and explanations to further a political or economical agenda.

[Forogil]

We know gravity isn't a downward pushing force because it's the same force that keeps planets and moons in orbit. We can use the exact same calculations for objects falling to Earth as we can for the Earth's orbit of the sun, with some additional parameters factored in.

That isn't correct.
There have been serious attempt as viewing gravity as a downward pushing force (Le Sage and others) - and it can reproduce those features; but it fails in other ways.

Thinking a scientific theory is true is still a believe.
Yes the earth is round, this can be proven by photo etch
( Don't start about fakes) but for example gravity, the earth pulling down.

It seems that there is a common misunderstanding here: gravity is not a theory.

There are several theories of gravity - some ridiculous (Aristotle's), some approximately correct and replaced by better theories (Newton's) - and some even better approximations (Einstein's general relativity).

In Newton's theory earth is pulling you down - but that isn't true of General Relativity where earth bends space-time and objects follow the curvature without any direct force between objects.

That shows two things: even if a theory is technically falsified - it can still be useful as an approximation; and the internals of how it occurs (objects seeking their natural place, a force between objects, bending space-time, or exchange of virtual particles, gravitons, that seem impossible to detect directly even in theory) doesn't matter for the prediction.

[Chrysia]

Yes I do. My faith in God and Jesus. Seeing how I won't live long enough to discover and learn everything there is to know about the universe, I won't pretend that science has given us all the answers. Science is full of scientific THEORIES. My ego isn't big enough to think I know it all.

Except you do think you know it all. You think you have answers to the biggest questions science is still trying to answer: the origins of the universe, universal laws, and life. You assert, without evidence, that you have a solution to problems science has only recently begun to explore.

[chooi]

you guys are personifying science as if it is a living thing, a spirit or a religion.

Science is an abstract concept that summarize human endeavor to understand the world. It's just a method. It's not religion, it does not need believing just to apply the method.

What people are believing in are the data, the results, the explanations of said physical phenomena.
Why are most people believe in those it's simply because as in so far the method has proven fruitful and reliable. The method is flexible, the explanations of the phenomena evolve as better data and better theory comes along and the method has self check in place to ensure errors are caught and rectified.

Science is not a religion. A religion is unchangeable, fixed. A religion is set by its scripture or traditions and will actively resist against change, against refinement or elimination of what is obsolete. A religion is the total opposite to science. Science does not promise truth or certitude, science is only the search, the method.

What i see in the comments above me is the refusal of scientific theory and explanations to further a political or economical agenda.

This so much.

As my good old android friend Data used to say: "The beginning of wisdom is: 'I don't know.'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eDYVtPwWiM

Scientific approach in a nutshell.

[LaserChild9]

To me, a scientist with no real qualifications in climatology who stands next to a left wing politician and declares the imminent end of the world unless we make sacrifices is no different than the scientist who works for oil companies and tells us burning fossil fuels is good for us.

A scientist who does anything but back scientific fact is not a scientist, the whole point of science is that it is a theory until proven but once proven it is fact. Just because a scientist and someone on the left agree on something, does not mean it is a big conspiracy theory, its more a case of the right ignoring scientific fact and claiming nonsense e.g. "Global warming was invented by the Chinese". When the right spews nonsense like that, of course any real scientist will disagree, that does not mean they are in cahoots with the left, just that the right is talking nonsense. Science is not political, voting one way or another does not change the laws of physics, any scientist that disagrees with established scientific fact for political gain is NOT a scientist, just an idiot.

[Chrysia]

A scientist who does anything but back scientific fact is not a scientist, the whole point of science is that it is a theory until proven but once proven it is fact. Just because a scientist and someone on the left agree on something, does not mean it is a big conspiracy theory, its more a case of the right ignoring scientific fact and claiming nonsense e.g. "Global warming was invented by the Chinese". When the right spews nonsense like that, of course any real scientist will disagree, that does not mean they are in cahoots with the left, just that the right is talking nonsense. Science is not political, voting one way or another does not change the laws of physics, any scientist that disagrees with established scientific fact for political gain is NOT a scientist, just an idiot.

No no no no no no no no no.

The only facts in science are the data. Theories aren't proven, they don't graduate to fact or law or anything else. Theories are hypotheses that have produced consistent results despite repeated attempts to falsify them.

[Teleros]

Seeing how I won't live long enough to discover and learn everything there is to know about the universe, I won't pretend that science has given us all the answers.

It can't, because you can't derive an "ought" from an "is". Because you can't do that, science is - must be - silent on matters of morality and the like.

Science is full of scientific THEORIES.

A layman's definition of "theory" is very different to the scientific definition of it, just so you know. Very briefly:

Law: Describes something, without explaining it.
Hypothesis: An untested idea to explain something. Must be testable - ie, disprovable, otherwise it's basically useless.
Theory: An explanation for something that has been tested and found to work*. Ideally, it should predict more accurate results than the theories it brushes aside.

*At least, mostly work. Scientists believe Einstein to be mostly right about relativity, but they're still trying to marry his work to quantum mechanics, meaning there's probably something wrong or missing somewhere.

In addition, it's important to note that we know virtually nothing in science. Is it E=MC^2, or E=1+MC^2? All those scientific theories are merely attempts to produce the universal rules that govern observed phenomena - but without actually knowing for certain the rules. To say "E=MC^2 is absolutely correct, no way no how could it be wrong" is as irrational and illogical as to say "God definitely does not exist". The strongest statement you can ever rationally say in such situations is "E=MC^2 is almost certainly correct", or "God almost certainly doesn't exist".

You think you have answers to the biggest questions science is still trying to answer: the origins of the universe, universal laws, and life. You assert, without evidence, that you have a solution to problems science has only recently begun to explore.

Science can explore some of those things, but it cannot answer them with any real level of certainty.

1. Origins of the universe: If the Big Bang was the beginning of it all, as seems to be the case, then science can go no further, because "before" the Big Bang there was neither space, nor time, nor universal laws, by definition. Branes, string theory, the multiverse - all very nice mathematics, but utterly lacking in evidence, predictive power, and everything else that would make them true scientific theories.
2. As above, science can only ever give us a best guess as to the laws of physics (etc).
3. Science can give us theories as to how life began, and can at least in principle demonstrate them in a laboratory. It cannot tell us how life began on Earth, unless someone has a TARDIS. The best science can say on this topic is "given the - admittedly very very VERY scarce - evidence, we have good reason to believe that on the balance of probabilities, life on Earth originated in such-and-such a manner".

= + =

I think a lot of the clash between religion and science stems from the name of the latter. In the good old days it was called "natural philosophy", the name of which was quite obviously restrictive - it did not concern itself with anything supernatural, only things encompassed by the laws of nature. When you take away that restriction, you get people trying to use science in places where it frankly has no business being - morality and theology spring immediately to mind.

[Unholyground]

Science has become a religion.

No, true Science is ever evolving and changing. Religion is stagnant with no room for change.

[Teleros]

No, true Science is ever evolving and changing. Religion is stagnant with no room for change.

Tell that to the chaps who went to the Council of Nicea, or Vatican II, or who caused the Sunni/Shia split, or...

[Thage]

At this point, anyone who uses "theory" as synonymous with "hypothesis" needs to watch less CSI and other 'smart' shows marketed to the sort of person who thinks "See Spot Run" is intellectually-challenging. If something is a theory, it's because it's been ruthlessly tested, retested, peer-reviewed, and re-tested by those peers (who are looking for any excuse to gun down your findings in order to make their own look better, to win acclaim among their peers and earn their place in the history books) to the point that the results are so consistently-reproduced that the scientific community becomes nearly unanimous in agreement that yes, this is how this particular aspect of the universe functions. And the onus is on the next big theory to disprove the previous one or find a way to live in coexistence as well as proving itself to be true.

Arbitrarily discounting current theory out of hand because you keep hearing "smart" characters on CSI and Law & Order use it when they're talking about a hunch or a hypothesis is bafflingly stupid and it always surprises me that people have been so dumbed down by those "smart" shows that it bleeds over into their understanding of actual scientific theory.

[Unholyground]

Tell that to the chaps who went to the Council of Nicea, or Vatican II, or who caused the Sunni/Shia split, or...

All religion based changes were only done for personal gain.

[Najnaj]

Claiming that science is religion is a statement so immensely stupid and uninformed that it rivals the flat earth idea. Science is a term so all encompassing and varied that to claim anything at all about it besides that it is the search for progress based on discovery and evidense just proves that you do not understand what you are talking about.

New cancer cure development - science

Realizing that you prefer shower gel to soap - science

Pouring detergent into rabbits eyes for cosmetic research - science

Saving 2 billion lives by developing a new form of rice - science

It isn't bad, it isn't good, it isn't anything but a methodical search for progress that sometimes goes right and sometimes wrong. It does not take sides, Einstein was a scientist but so was Joseph Mengele. Most importantly, it takes nothing on faith, be it good or bad. It requires at least sound logic and reasoning if not absolute evidence but makes no difference if that evidence is about eradicating smallpox or more effectively kill off a million innocent people.

Also, I see a lot of people mentioning global warming here. If you do you are confusing bad tabloid journalistic representation of global warming with the actual science of it. Just because Fox News can find one crazy guy they put in a lab coat to scream hellfire does not mean this is a the truth or even representative of the situation in general. It simply means that they figured out that they can sell more ad space that way...and they did that with science.