(January 14, 2018 at 9:34 pm)canlogician Wrote: On a side note, I noticed you flubbed your quotation of Khemikal above. (It happens with newcomers.) The link below will give you the basics of BB code so you can understand things (like how to quote segments of another post point by point instead of the whole thing etc.)
https://atheistforums.org/thread-3560.html
Thank you for the help with quotes in posts.
(January 14, 2018 at 9:34 pm)canlogician Wrote: If we believe what science tells us is certain, then we are wrong. Science provides a framework in which conclusions can be reached based on experimental data. Anyone who understands science knows that. As long as we keep observing the universe, new data can come to light which challenges our previous conclusions.
I agree with you completely, I beleive I said something similar earlier.
(January 14, 2018 at 9:34 pm)canlogician Wrote: Again, science requires little faith on our part. If we misunderstand gravity, there are enterprising theoreticians and experimenters who make it their life's work to correct this misunderstanding. "We might have gotten gravity wrong," is something you hear physicists say in pop science literature. Contrast this with your statement: "Yet we believe science tells us it is certain." Science doesn't tell us it is certain. It tells us that this is the best empirical understanding we have at this point. Contrast with religion. Religion "tells us it is certain." That's why so many reject it.
I don't agree with you on this point. Science has evolved exclusively to meet human needs, it is driven by our faith in theoreticians and experimenters who make it their life's work to correct the misunderstandings - even when science discloses a world we can never control let alone fully understand. Science has been used to support the conceit that humans will eventually understand the world, but what science really shows us is a Universe we cannot understand or control and we will never altar our ultimate destiny, extinction. It begs the question, 'why are we still trying?' and the answer to this is faith.
If you ask people why we continue with scientific study and exploration the answer you will get is because 'we might' ... correct the misunderstanding ... find our way to another inhabitable planet... learn to live beneath the sea ... find a cure for death ... et cetera. We might, we might not, and it is faith that give us the hope to cling on, exactly the same way religion does.
cor
"We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. We cooperate effectively with strangers because we believe in things like gods, nations, money and human rights. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money and no human rights—except in the common imagination of human beings. You can never convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana by promising him that after he dies, he will get limitless bananas in chimpanzee Heaven. Only Sapiens can believe such stories. This is why we rule the world, and chimpanzees are locked up in zoos and research laboratories."
Yuval Noah Harari
