Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[Ferrocyanide]

As Steven Novella said "There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?"

Dot points:


People, namely scientists, conduct science. Science does not conduct itself.

Scientists, being people, can sometimes fail at using logic properly to evaluate results. They can also end up doing very shoddy research.

Subjectivity plays an inevitable role when interpreting results and determining conclusions. And as such, biases are at play as well.

Politics itself is certainly at play when it comes to conducting science (e.g., grant providers funding only selective topics for research depending on certain ideological views).

Science has known limitations.

Your view of science (and Steven's view of science) sounds quite ideological to me.

I am going to turn this into Science vs Religion.
Also, the word ideology has a negative connotation for me.
I looked at the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Are you guys going with definition 1a?
1a. manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture

I suppose with that definition, science is an idealogy but so is just about everything, such as taking a shower.

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1. That’s true. Science does not conduct itself. It isn’t an entity with a brain.
The goal of science is to understand nature, which means that science is done by entities with a brain.

ALSO, science is an open system.
Anyone can join in. Anyone can buy the equipment, chemicals, computers and redo a previously done experiment or try something new.
Anyone can go to university and study and then get a job doing research.

Religion is a closed system. Anyone can read the “holy” text but the “gods” are not going to just talk to anyone.
There are no “religion” scientists. Nothing new and of value comes from the religion side.
There is no experiment that we can perform, unless if you want to try to tell a mountain to get up and walk. The problem with that is that you need to have sufficient faith in order for that to work. How do we measure “faith”? Where can I buy a faith-o-meter?
In other words, there is no useful experiment that we can perform. It will always fail. No mountain is going to get up and walk around.

2. Yes, individual scientists can fail but since it is an open system, anyone can verify their work (peer review) and it can be done at any time, today, tomorrow, in 100 y.
Any scientists who commits a fraud eventually gets discovered.

Religion: How can we verify if a guy is really the son of a god?
How can we verify that a prophet is really talking to a god?
How can we verify that some guy, 2000 y ago, brought dead people to life? It happened too long ago during a period where everyone is superstitious. There were no reputable news paper agencies, no reputable scientific organizations.

Once again, science is verifiable and religion is not.

3. Yes, that is true. This is like #2.

4. Yes, that is true. Science costs money. If you are doing pure research, then you are most likely not going to produce some “product”. Companies are not going to pay you to do pure research. They want a marketable product. For example, the semiconductor industry will pay you to find a way to make the gate of field effect transistors thinner.

The only entity that can fund pure research is the government. NASA is one example. ROSCOSMOS is another example - the russian space agency. JAXA, the japanese space agency. CNSA - China National Space Administration.

5. That’s normal.
We can’t time travel to the past and verify certain things such as during the time period that coal formed. We use logic + evidence to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.
We can’t dig to the center of the Earth. We use logic + evidence to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.

We could also claim that space aliens came and put the coal there or put life on Earth, but that has no particular value in the domain of science because it does not explain the mechanism of coal formation. Space alien stories belong in the domain of sci-fi.
Replace the words “space aliens” with gods, and the story goes to the religion section.