(December 19, 2014 at 5:27 am)robvalue Wrote: I have noticed that the word "science" is nearly as misunderstood as "atheist". And some people even think they mean the same thing, or that to accept one you must also accept the other.I think it's context-dependent. A person may use the word to denote the scientific method, or to refer to the disciplines of science (physics, biology, etc) in general, or to refer to things like technology (which are usually made possible by the previous two). Some theists pretend that "science" is just a stand-in for god- a way for an atheist to try to "fill that Jesus-shaped hole in his heart." I see it as an attempt to create a false equivalence; note the recent posts insisting that atheists are just as faith-driven as theists, but that they put their faith in science instead of god.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
