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"In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 8, 2011 at 4:30 pm
(This post was last modified: January 8, 2011 at 4:32 pm by Rwandrall.)
This is an argument i've heard a lot, mostly from sane-ish christians that say science is not always right. I will use the word "science" here as a general term characterizing mankind's knowledge and understanding of the Universe.
Tons of very renowned scientists assured the public that the Car, the Television, the Computer would be fashion inventions that had no future.
200 years ago, scientists assured that there was no way humans would ever go faster than 30 mph.
Going further back, 2000 years ago our understanding of the universe was very primal and in a way childish.
What's to say that 2000 years from now, all of our theories and laws will not be looked upon as childish and ignorant by our descendants ? They work for now, but how can we take them so seriously when in the future we are likely to realize how silly and ignorant we were ?
The link to Religion is that Science being not "credible' because the knowledge we now have, including Darwinian theory, is probably going to be obsolete down the road, its incompatibility with religious texts does not matter.
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 8, 2011 at 4:49 pm
I'm not sure what your point is.
Yes, science evolves based on new findings and it keeps asking new questions.
The point is that religion already thinks it has all the answers.
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 8, 2011 at 5:18 pm
It's not even zero years, and the bible is already laughed at. So I guess bible wins.
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 8, 2011 at 7:48 pm
BTW this isnt my point, but people who argue that use that argument.
Basically it means: how can we trust science when it will become obsolete over time anyways ? Is it the absolute truth if it is likely we'll find it silly in a few hundred years ?
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 8, 2011 at 7:51 pm
People use lots of stupid arguments.
That will never change.
We live in the fervent hope that scientific investigation will get closer to the facts.
Religions morons live in the desperate hope that their fairy tales were right all along.
Big difference.
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 8, 2011 at 8:49 pm
I don't see how this wouldn't be true. Not only is scientific progress marching on, but the information age has allowed this progress to accelerate faster and faster with each passing day.
One hundred years from now, humanity will look at the early 21st century like we currently do the early 19th century. Two hundred years from now, they'll look on us like we look at the 14th century.
But, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 8, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Rwandrall Wrote:BTW this isnt my point, but people who argue that use that argument.
Basically it means: how can we trust science when it will become obsolete over time anyways ? Is it the absolute truth if it is likely we'll find it silly in a few hundred years ?
Science won't become obsolete probably will evolve into fitting needs of that
Basicly it's assumptions made by arrogant people of the present in relation to the past, for example nowadays we deal with things that the ancient Egyptians had already seen as a problem and made something similar to laws to treat them(which surprised me), for example this segment of a webcomic kinda touches that example correctly
![[Image: assumptions.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img137.imageshack.us%2Fimg137%2F9751%2Fassumptions.jpg)
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 9, 2011 at 6:33 am
So how can we trust the current knowledge we have, including evolution for example, knowing its likely to become obsolete ?
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 9, 2011 at 7:40 am
(This post was last modified: January 9, 2011 at 7:42 am by Edwardo Piet.)
Rwandrall Wrote:Basically it means: how can we trust science when it will become obsolete over time anyways ? Is it the absolute truth if it is likely we'll find it silly in a few hundred years ?
Because it's always best to trust the best information AVAILABLE.
Just because science corrects itself doesn't mean it doesn't get anything right. Just because it gets closer to the truth doesn't mean that beforehand it was a hundred miles from it.
Rwandrall Wrote:So how can we trust the current knowledge we have, including evolution for example, knowing its likely to become obsolete ?
You DON'T know that it's likely to become obsolete.
What about all the countless facts and theories of science that HAVEN'T become obsolete? Why are you ignoring them?
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RE: "In 100 years, our vision of science will be laughed at".
January 9, 2011 at 8:02 am
First, as i already said 2 or 3 times, this is not MY argument, it's an argument that theists use. So keep that in mind, im only being the Devil's advocate.
Some theories have not gone obsolete, but a lot have. So how can we trust the knowledge that we now have considering that knowledge is likely (likely meaning a probability, not a certainty) wrong ?
And to link that to theism: the science behind radiometric dating, evolution, the Big Bang, the expansion of the Universe, the origins of life, etc cannot be trusted since it is likely (again, emphasis on the "likely") to be proven false in time.
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![[Image: assumptions.jpg]](http://img137.imageshack.us/i/assumptions.jpg/)
