(March 10, 2013 at 2:55 pm)Stimbo Wrote: So? Science advances as we learn new things. For instance, Charles Darwin proposed a mechanism for evolution but didn't know precisely how it might work. The discovery of DNA blew the field wide open. However it would take something pretty drastic to completely overturn much of what we know.
I think the idea that 'science advances' is highly questionable.
There is a misunderstanding in Western thought that truth will set us free. Free from religion, free from ignorance, free from the evolutionary bonds that tie us to our animal past. This is a myth, a Socratic dream.
Socratic philosophy was born of a mystical experience, Socrates inner 'voice of God'. The rational examination of life is founded on faith, there is no connection between human well-being and increased knowledge about our world. We are blinded by the evolutionary imperatives that drive us, we seek genetic perpetuation, not truth. To think otherwise is to fall into the pre-Darwinist trap of imagining humans are different from other animals, it's unscientific.
As evolutionary biologist, Robert Trivers points out, evolution will 'select for a degree of self-decption, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the decption being practiced.'
Science will never be used chiefly to persue truth,or to improve human life. Science cannot be used to reshape humanity into a more rational species. We look back into history and see how irrational humanity has been and we imagine we have moved beyond that, that we are better than our ancestors, but this is a delusion. We may have found new ways to deceive ourselves through scientific endeavour but we are just as irrational as a species as we have always been, and future generations will recognise this about us as we recognise it about our ancestors. It is a curious stance that humanity as a species must and will be rational, one that has no evidence to support it, and yet it lies at the heart of modern scientific faith.
Folklore has grown up around an old English King, Canute. It is said he once stood against the waves to demonstrate his power, and as expected the waves carried on and he dissapeared under the water as the tide came in. We can hold science up, Canute-like, against irrational human behaviour but, like ancient Kings, we too will be washed away.
'Science advances' is a cacophonic hymn from the church of delusional humanists.
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
