Well...it had to be on the web...

[cthulhu77]

Cephkid, you must be joking, right?? Scientists, not arrogant???? Wow. Just attend some meetings and watch the fur fly as one after another tries to debunk or outprove another. They act the same as evangelists !!!

Which is my point...science does a good job of explaining things we can view and understand simply, but not things that we can not...ie: how friendly are the debates about string theory vs. 'brane ??? Not very.

It does what it can do...but to say that "science" is the "end-all" is foolish and short-sighted.

greg

 

[Cephkid]

Cephkid, you must be joking, right?? Scientists, not arrogant???? Wow. Just attend some meetings and watch the fur fly as one after another tries to debunk or outprove another. They act the same as evangelists !!!

Which is my point...science does a good job of explaining things we can view and understand simply, but not things that we can not...ie: how friendly are the debates about string theory vs. 'brane ??? Not very.

It does what it can do...but to say that "science" is the "end-all" is foolish and short-sighted.

greg

Greg, PLEASE. "Scientists, not arrogant????" DO YOU THINK ME MAD?!?! OF COURSE SCIENTISTS are arrogant!!! How mad would I be?! Look up. (No not research, look UP. ^That way^. ). I said SCIENCE. Not scientists, science itself. Look at its history. First newton said gravity was instant. Then, Einstein proved that it wasn't. SCIENCE ITSELF is by no means arrogant, heck, science is what typically proves itself wrong! Science is not the "end all". It just is the METHOD of proving things to be true, and learning what IS true. I am a firm believer in science, but I long ago planned to be baptized the day I die just in case. Believing in science to solve everything is the mark of a fool. IMHO, the true spirit of what science should be is to look at the world with an open mind, see all possibilities, and try to learn. I sadly cannot express my feelings through writing, as I am a rather pathetic composer of speeches. Though I will say this: to get an idea of how I feel about how science should be viewed and practiced, don't look at the conflict, look at how a child thinks when they ask their parents how something works. I leave you to think about this.

Gabe

 

[cthulhu77]

Well, I agree with you to a point...science is a wonderful tool, but it can not explain some things, and is often bolstered up only by it's own theories...a nice term for this is "bootstrap levitation", since scientists will build one theory on another, and another, and another...all supposing that they are true, then look behind them to see no ladder, but their heads are in the clouds.
then the fall comes.

Many scientists, such as Dr. SOS, Kat, Myop, and others here work with the "real" world, and can physically prove their work...but to label all sciences as the "right way" to look at the world is tunnel vision.

g

 

[Cephkid]

Well, I agree with you to a point...science is a wonderful tool, but it can not explain some things, and is often bolstered up only by it's own theories...a nice term for this is "bootstrap levitation", since scientists will build one theory on another, and another, and another...all supposing that they are true, then look behind them to see no ladder, but their heads are in the clouds.
then the fall comes.

Many scientists, such as Dr. SOS, Kat, Myop, and others here work with the "real" world, and can physically prove their work...but to label all sciences as the "right way" to look at the world is tunnel vision.

g

Well, [B]yeah[/B].

 

[monty]

Well, yeah.

Just because there exist flaws in the way people do science sometimes doesn't mean that science itself is flawed. The scientific method has been used effectively to produce theories and models that explain the behavior of the real world and can be used to make predictions about it. These theories and models can be assessed for validity in a rigorous way. In my mind, the "real science" is that which has been validated through this process, and the discussions of "pet theories" and the like are much more about things that scientists would like to validate or invalidate, so they are the proto-science that will or won't prove to be correct by the established method.

Something that irks me to no end is when scientists (or poseurs) use "I am a scientist" as justification for saying "and therefore, my opinion is better than yours." Maybe so, maybe not, but that's often spun as "and this opinion has been validated by the scientific method" whether it has or not.

However, there are a lot of well-trained critical thinkers in the sciences, and it is pretty unusual to come up with a viewpoint or a criticism or a worldview or a theory that hasn't been thought of, discussed, and analyzed before. In the case of ID, a lot of the arguments appear to be based on "it is common sense that..." ideas which have been examined by evolutionary biologists for many years and found to be inconsistent with what they observe... ID does not explain observations or make useful predictions about the real world. Therefore, it is not science.



(by the way, it is not inherent in the nature of randomness that it can't be guided by some outside power-- all we can say is that on observing random events, we don't see statistical biases, but maybe God just likes the aesthetics of normal distributions or something. However, wondering about this is not science, and can't really be addressed with the scientific method.)

 

[cthulhu77]

Monty, perfectly said !!!!

 

[Cephkid]

Just because there exist flaws in the way people do science sometimes doesn't mean that science itself is flawed. The scientific method has been used effectively to produce theories and models that explain the behavior of the real world and can be used to make predictions about it. These theories and models can be assessed for validity in a rigorous way. In my mind, the "real science" is that which has been validated through this process, and the discussions of "pet theories" and the like are much more about things that scientists would like to validate or invalidate, so they are the proto-science that will or won't prove to be correct by the established method.

Something that irks me to no end is when scientists (or poseurs) use "I am a scientist" as justification for saying "and therefore, my opinion is better than yours." Maybe so, maybe not, but that's often spun as "and this opinion has been validated by the scientific method" whether it has or not.

However, there are a lot of well-trained critical thinkers in the sciences, and it is pretty unusual to come up with a viewpoint or a criticism or a worldview or a theory that hasn't been thought of, discussed, and analyzed before. In the case of ID, a lot of the arguments appear to be based on "it is common sense that..." ideas which have been examined by evolutionary biologists for many years and found to be inconsistent with what they observe... ID does not explain observations or make useful predictions about the real world. Therefore, it is not science.



(by the way, it is not inherent in the nature of randomness that it can't be guided by some outside power-- all we can say is that on observing random events, we don't see statistical biases, but maybe God just likes the aesthetics of normal distributions or something. However, wondering about this is not science, and can't really be addressed with the scientific method.)

Excellent! (Say, could you teach me how to express myself through type that well? )

 

[sorseress]

Cephkid,
I think you express yourself very well. You obviously think before you speak (or write, in this case) and are very good at getting your point across.

 

[monty]

Excellent! (Say, could you teach me how to express myself through type that well? )

Thanks-- I didn't realize I'd summed up in a way that would resonnate so well with people; I just thought I was waxing opinionated!

Like Sorseress, I'd say you do pretty well expressing yourself... being confident is the best advice I can offer. You're clearly good at thinking through the ideas, and it comes across in your posts. You do seem to write as if you're speaking, and not take as much advantage as you can of the fact that you can go back and re-read what you've typed... I find that sometimes once I've gotten the ideas typed out free-form, I can go back and re-organize them into something a bit more coherent and expressive. If you get in the habit of that, you can also learn to do it as you go along, too, and develop a "writing voice" that is better suited to being read, rather than heard.

Oh, and of course, practice, practice, practice. Keeping a journal works for some people; I have a lot of friends who use livejournal.com as a "writing for writing's sake" place, and I sporadically do that myself.

another and worth every penny, I'm sure.

 

[Cephkid]

Thanks-- I didn't realize I'd summed up in a way that would resonnate so well with people; I just thought I was waxing opinionated!

Like Sorseress, I'd say you do pretty well expressing yourself... being confident is the best advice I can offer. You're clearly good at thinking through the ideas, and it comes across in your posts. You do seem to write as if you're speaking, and not take as much advantage as you can of the fact that you can go back and re-read what you've typed... I find that sometimes once I've gotten the ideas typed out free-form, I can go back and re-organize them into something a bit more coherent and expressive. If you get in the habit of that, you can also learn to do it as you go along, too, and develop a "writing voice" that is better suited to being read, rather than heard.

Oh, and of course, practice, practice, practice. Keeping a journal works for some people; I have a lot of friends who use livejournal.com as a "writing for writing's sake" place, and I sporadically do that myself.

another and worth every penny, I'm sure.

Thank you! Will do! (As for resonating well, it's because you pretty much put down what I was tryin to say!)

Cephkid,
I think you express yourself very well. You obviously think before you speak (or write, in this case) and are very good at getting your point across.

Thanks. I do try! (It's kinda necessary with my level of A.D.D.---I don't speak nearly this clearly!) lol.

Thanks for the guys and gals, worth every penny!

^______^

Gabe

 

[sorseress]

Did you ever notice how many people with A.D.D. are very very bright?

 

[Cephkid]

Not particularly, but you may have a point there!

 

[monty]

Did you ever notice how many people with A.D.D. are very very bright?

I certainly know a lot of very bright people with A.D.D. -- it seems like it's in the nature of A.D.D. that it makes people think a lot, just in a way that's hard to focus... but maybe the thinking a lot actually helps to practice cleverness and creativity.

 

[um...]

I shouldn't be posting this here:

Flying Spaghetti Monster: The Game

I only managed to convert 10 Pastafarians on my first attempt.

 

[Fujisawas Sake]

I shouldn't be posting this here:

Flying Spaghetti Monster: The Game

I only managed to convert 10 Pastafarians on my first attempt.

1) Yes, you should

2) Hey mon! Uncle Um... , leave us Pastafarians alone to roll our canelloni in peace, mon!

*inhales deeply*

John