Science vs. Religion

[Angrboda]

You should understand that even if every scientific theory humans have ever made turns out to be completely incorrect, the credibility of religion is in no way enhanced by this?

Scientific methodologies may fail disastrously, and frequently have. Religion has failed completely to give an accurate picture of the natural world. The reason science is the right course and religion is the wrong course is because scientists can admit that an approach has failed and will attempt others. The religious cannot accept the idea that their scripture got something wrong and will ignore reality.

You are right up to a point, that point is when the evidence is so overwhelmingly in favour of the scientific view point that it can't possibly be ignored. At which point religions go, "well that's what we meant all the time...."

Theories have four stages of acceptance:
i. this is worthless nonsense;
ii. this is interesting, but perverse;
iii. this is true, but quite unimportant;
iv. I always said so.

J. B. S. HALDANE, 1963

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Really? The Michelson-Morley experiment proved that the luminiferous aether, which scientists up to then had insisted must be a pervading medium throughout the Universe in order to propogate light, does not exist.

Have you heard of Ignaz Semmelweis? Of course you have, and what happened when he did something that he didn't have a sufficient scientific explanation for? That's right, he was "creatively fired"! Okay, so we now know his theory about cadaverous poisoning was hogwash, but really the theory didn't matter as much as the observation did it? He was laughed at because he didn't have a sufficient theory, but he had clear and certain observable evidence.

And what mistake did they make? That's right - expecting to have answers from science. Semmelweis had a prediction for the behavioural chance that was consistent with observation, it didn't matter whether or not he had the answer or whether or not he contracted the scientific consensus at the time, regardless he was right wasn't he?

Dogmatism and orthodoxy can be both a strength and a weakness. (I would point to Galen's theories which prospered at the expense of truth due to interference from the religious and the taboo on such examinations. Even Descartes, at that late stage, experimented on dogs instead of humans, and carefully hedged his bets in his writing, to guard against prosecution by the church.)

That you facilely think science has a problem because it too employs dogmatism and orthodoxy, in addition to being a superficial and failed analysis, is another example of the tu quoque fallacy. We want scientists to be somewhat conservative; we want this because it is a strategy which works. We don't want just any answers, so some of the guilty will go free and the innocent shall burn. This is simply an unavoidable fact of the problem space. We as a biological species will always unthinkingly favor relying on those things we know (or think we know) that work, to the exclusion of trying new things. (Incidentally, the CAM movement and branch of NIH is a potent example of what happens when exploration and acceptance override conservatism and closed-mindedness to an unhealthy extent.) But this is a feature of all human systems. It's what results when you have a specimen and a species that must pass on its genes or perish, and the animal which explores too much and does "what's always worked" too little will simply disappear from the gene pool. This is neither good or bad, it just is.

So for you to waggle your finger and say, "bad scientists," simply shows your profoundly simplistic understanding of the issue.

Moreover, when it comes to unhealthy sacrificing of exploration in the name of dogmatism, science can't even hope to compete with religion.

(ETA: By the way, we now know that Semmelweiss was right. Do you know how that happened? Well it's like this, a previously unknown manuscript was discovered in the desert of Israel...)