Scepticism towards science

[Spectral]

Why are is it so easy for people to just accept ANYTHING that starts with "religious prophets have herpaderped that 75% herpaderp"

This should really be 100% herpaderp in this case.

---------- Post added 2013-04-05 at 06:02 PM ----------

It's not just Bioshock. So many good movies and games have been destroyed by this stupid stupid premise. It would have been more pleasing and realistic to me if they simply let God appear and solve all the problems...

Real lives are destroyed by that stupid premise. I think you'll manage with some games you don't enjoy.

[Kraenen]

Why isn't there any?

Why are is it so easy for people to just accept ANYTHING that starts with "scientist have herpaderped that 75% herpaderp" while every time the word "God" is mentioned it's unreasonable? Hell, they will even quote WIKIPEDIA and feel confident about that.

This came up again after I saw the stupid ending of Bioshock: Infinite. Instead of making something reasonable out of it, they go the good old "multidimension-timetravel" nonsense route. And people seem to love it?! How can people seriously believe in timetravel nonsense and infinite dimensions, but when they hear somebody mention Alaa or God or any other religion they instantly go "nope, can't be".

I love scepticism and I love that people don't blindly follow into religion, but why do they follow blindly into WIKIPEDIA and "scientists have proven...". Isn't this exactly the same thing? Someone else telling you how things are, even though you don't know it yourself?


Sorry for my fury, it's just this entire timetravel nonsense... Everytime I see this mentioned and somebody responding with "timeparadoxon" I get this huge urge to eradicate the entire planet from all...

Because people will beleive anything. Don't you wonder why they believed in religion for so many years? The difference is science is critical and skeptical by nature. You're always trying to disprove the null hypothesis or what has been accepted as mainstream knowledge.

The reason they instantly say God is out of the picture is because they know it's just a tautology, an unfalsifiable theory, which doesn't work by definition.

[Adam Jensen]

Priests are at least just as sceptical towards other religions as scientists are towards other theories.

But I'm talking about the average Joe, the guy that doesn't understand/does not care enough to understand gravity and all this stuff. Why is the average Joe not sceptical?

Because the average joe assumes that the scientists are better educated in their field than themselves. I for one would trust Neil deGrasse Tyson on astrophysics more than I would trust my own knowledge because it is his area of expertise. And if I truly wanted to determine if NdT was a good source of information, I can always go to a university, learn about astrophysics and see if the things he says are correct. See, that's the thing about science is that other people can repeat your experiments to confirm that your conclusions are correct (or determine that they are wrong.) However, some of these things require a near lifetime of experience in the field and we don't have enough time to become experts in all things so we have to trust the ones who have become experts.

[Reeve]

Priests are at least just as sceptical towards other religions as scientists are towards other theories.

But I'm talking about the average Joe, the guy that doesn't understand/does not care enough to understand gravity and all this stuff. Why is the average Joe not sceptical?

Priests aren't open to being disproven though. Scientists are.

But as for your average Joe. Perhaps he believes because Science has a proven track record of being able to predict future behaviors and phenomena in such a way that has allowed us to build the whole modern world. Religion doesn't. When scientists say the Apophis asteroid will pass close to Earth in 2036, that's verifiable and something that will happen. We know this because we've seen them accurately make this sort of prediction many times before. When religions say the Apocalypse will occur in 2012, that's verifiable, except it didn't happen. Nor are there any verifiable cases of witchcraft, talking snakes, magic animal blood, reincarnation, or any number of other phenomena predicted by religion.

[Adam Jensen]

You mean search wikipedia for "string theory"? No, no thanks ^^

Why not? So long as the information has citations, you should be safe.

[Kraenen]

You mean search wikipedia for "string theory"? No, no thanks ^^

It's not just Bioshock. So many good movies and games have been destroyed by this stupid stupid premise. It would have been more pleasing and realistic to me if they simply let God appear and solve all the problems...

Deus ex machina is one of the worst story devices ever. It makes the entire story useless and meaningless.

[Skrototem]

Priests are at least just as sceptical towards other religions as scientists are towards other theories.

But I'm talking about the average Joe, the guy that doesn't understand/does not care enough to understand gravity and all this stuff. Why is the average Joe not sceptical?

Really? I'm having trouble believing you're serious now.

Religious factions aren't skeptical towards rival religions, they flat out hate and refuse to acknowledge each other, that is not an approach that leads towards more answers, it's just intolerance and a refusal to seek answers. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of wars fought because of opposing religious views based on nothing more than an ancient story and chinese whispers.

[Deleted]

same old religion vs science thread sadly, I agree that sometimes (this doesn't go for everything that has to do with science ofcourse)
Science is like looking at shapes in the clouds. Trying to connect the 1 thing with the other. How many times has a Theory or a science test been proved wrong by another science test afterwards.

If things are only true if we can messure them up, we've got a big problem on our hands

[Reeve]

You mean search wikipedia for "string theory"? No, no thanks ^^

It's not just Bioshock. So many good movies and games have been destroyed by this stupid stupid premise. It would have been more pleasing and realistic to me if they simply let God appear and solve all the problems...

God does this in countless stories. There's even a term for it, called Deus Ex Machina. Let scientists have their moment.

[Spectral]

If things are only true if we can messure them up, we've got a big problem on our hands

What's the big problem?

[Adam Jensen]

Really? I'm having trouble believing you're serious now.

Religious factions aren't skeptical towards rival religions, they flat out hate and refuse to acknowledge each other, that is not an approach that leads towards more answers, it's just intolerance and a refusal to seek answers. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of wars fought because of opposing religious views based on nothing more than an ancient story and chinese whispers.

Meanwhile two scientists with opposing view points are more likely than two priests to come together and try to resolve their issues. Because that's how science works, they look at evidence, not fervent belief and any scientist worth his salt will drop his own theory if new evidence goes against his theory.

[Reeve]

Really? I'm having trouble believing you're serious now.

Religious factions aren't skeptical towards rival religions, they flat out hate and refuse to acknowledge each other, that is not an approach that leads towards more answers, it's just intolerance and a refusal to seek answers. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of wars fought because of opposing religious views based on nothing more than an ancient story and chinese whispers.

Plus if you choose not to believe what a scientist says, the scientist doesn't tell you you'll burn in hellfire for all eternity.

[Synithin]

You mean search wikipedia for "string theory"? No, no thanks ^^

It's not just Bioshock. So many good movies and games have been destroyed by this stupid stupid premise. It would have been more pleasing and realistic to me if they simply let God appear and solve all the problems...

You're a stupid premise.

Infracted: please post constructively

[Deleted]

Scientists have contradicted themselves so often, it could be said it's irrational to believe them. And this isn't even the main problem. The problem is if people see a graph made university "herpaderp" and they don't ask "Are these sources even reliable? Is this even true?", but they blindly accept it as a wikipedia fact and make conclusions out of it.

You know little about the process of scrutiny that goes into the ability to be able to say 'University X has found that...'; If something (a fact, a figure etc) has been published it has gone through a process of peer reviewed examination. Then once it is the open it is still open to falsification, this is how science works. It moves forward because nothing is an absolute, it is the best possible explanation until a better way is found.

So people do ask "Are these sources even reliable? Is this even true?", all the time.

Edit: in response to the why do people allow pseudo science yet not religion; there is plenty of games where religion is the driving factor so I fail to see your point.

[Deleted]

You know little about the process of scrutiny that goes into the ability to be able to say 'University X has found that...'; If something (a fact, a figure etc) has been published it has gone through a process of peer reviewed examination. Then once it is the open it is still open to falsification, this is how science works. It moves forward because nothing is an absolute, it is the best possible explanation until a better way is found.

So people do ask "Are these sources even reliable? Is this even true?", all the time.

Edit: in response to the why do people allow pseudo science yet not religion; there is plenty of games where religion is the driving factor so I fail to see your point.

Thank god (no pun intended) for that, I thought I'd gone insane.

As to your point on failing to see his, there in fact is none to be seen. I'm reasonably sure he's "trolling". Surely someone couldn't be this dim.

[anyaka21]

Science is tested to death. Scientists themselves are often skeptical, knowing that science gets better and older discoveries are often disproven.

The difference between science and religion is that scientists celebrate when one of their theories is proven wrong. If you can disprove General Relativity, you're likely to get a Nobel Prize. Religion, on the other hand, resists any attempt to show it to be wrong.

I think you have just inwittingly brought out the crux of the matter. Science can and is wrong a lot of the time. Too many theories are bandied around as proven facts and 5 years later no absolute proofs are there, still just theories waiting to be proven facts, even though they are taught as fact.

Simple example, and not trying to create controversy here, but The Gay Gene. It was pretty much thrown out there and taught as fact, but now even today there isn't any actual proof of it being true, only recently have scientists come out and said there isn't any. Now they are throwing out the theory of epigenetics, or something like that. My personal OPINION (and saying it in caps) is that it's either a conscious or subconscious choice, and the sooner we realize this, the better off everyone will be. We can get on with the business of accepting people and letting them live their lives.

I also understand the point about God, but I also don't understand the full on "there is no God because there is no proof" argument either. Because let's face the simple fact that the basics of God has Him/Her/It existing outside of time and space, and therefore can't be proven to exist. Add that you also can't prove that He/She/It doesn't exist either so the argument is moot and becomes an insane cyclical raving of lunatics that is based on beliefs either way.

Can't we all just get along....


edit: add that science can be tested to death, but many times it is not. In fact a lot of science (at least present day) is done at the behest of corporations trying to prove something that will make them money. Or other scientists are working hard on a pill that will cure Cancer or Aids or Alzheimers, and right near the end of their grants they make some magical breakthrough that will give them a grant for another 10 years, and 10 years later nothing has happened, and then they have a magical breakthrough that gets them another 10 year grant.

[thoruga]

Science is tested to death. Scientists themselves are often skeptical, knowing that science gets better and older discoveries are often disproven.

The difference between science and religion is that scientists celebrate when one of their theories is proven wrong. If you can disprove General Relativity, you're likely to get a Nobel Prize. Religion, on the other hand, resists any attempt to show it to be wrong.

Lol. Do they celebrate when theories proven wrong? Do you think scientists are holy man who has the sole purpose of finding true knowledge for the good of human kind. No. I know it first hand. Scientists are no different than any men and this is how they earn money. Any theory today can be proven wrong. Scientists are very skeptical about correctness of anything since they realized Newton's laws aren't actually true. The reason most scientists are skeptical because they're jealous of others. Call me cynical, but that's how it works. But really, I know many scientists personally, none of them would celebrate their theories proven wrong unless they are the ones who disprove it.

[Jamber]

I literally just registered for the first time after reading this site for what must be going on 6 years right now, just to share with you the magnitude of unbelief I just felt reading your post. You are quite literally the worst. I sincerely hope you're still young, and still learning, because by god, you need it.

Your name. Oh man, that made me laugh doubly.

On Topic: Melt, you are really blowing things out of proportion. Yes, there are people who will take blindly a science fiction (read: fiction, like multiple universes and time travel, there is no proof of it) idea, and if uneducated in the matter, might think it's real. If you read stories and play games for reality's sake, best go to the non-fiction section in whatever you do, or you're going to be wound so tight, you might just pop into a singularity.

Now, read my text - all scientific data, theory and hypothesis are the most scrutinized information in human history. Your assumption that the average Joe will accept anything with "science" placed in front and toss aside anything with "God" placed in front is a fallacy. On average, you'll find equal numbers on this planet.

And I hope I just didn't feed the under-bridge dweller by responding here.

[Spectral]

ISimple example, and not trying to create controversy here, but The Gay Gene. It was pretty much thrown out there and taught as fact, but now even today there isn't any actual proof of it being true, only recently have scientists come out and said there isn't any.

Your entire argument is predicated on bad information. You're plainly wrong and it seems like you don't really even understand the basics of genetics.

[Adam Jensen]

I also understand the point about God, but I also don't understand the full on "there is no God because there is no proof" argument either. Because let's face the simple fact that the basics of God has Him/Her/It existing outside of time and space, and therefore can't be proven to exist. Add that you also can't prove that He/She/It doesn't exist either so the argument is moot and becomes an insane cyclical raving of lunatics that is based on beliefs either way.

Can't we all just get along....

It doesn't matter that science can't prove that god does not exist, what matters is that science can't prove that he does exist. If science cannot validate god, then god cannot be used in any scientific theory because scientific theories require things that have already been validated to be true. So long as you can't prove he exists, then you can't use it as a theory.

Science does not state that god does not exist, it cannot make that statement because that cannot be proven. However, since it also cannot state that god does exist, god cannot be used in the scientific method. Science is, when it comes to god, agnostic.

---------- Post added 2013-04-05 at 06:18 PM ----------

I wonder, if the OP felt this strongly about BSI, if he can watch Doctor Who without having a seizure . . .