Evolutionary biology adopting religious traits

[Alex K]

Calling modern evolutionary theory "Darwinism" is like calling aeronautical engineering "Wrightism".

Yeah, it has always annoyed me, but some science communicators are prone to it. Neodarwinian synthesis is more like it.

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Darwin Day (what the hell, why can't I post links?) [because you haven't been a member for 30 days or have posted 30 posts - it's the roolz]Google it. No Einstein Day. Newton Day in America would be about fig bars.

It could just be the time, if Newton had lived till the late 19th century, there might be one. However, the fact that it's now highlighted in the US is, in my opinion merely a small pushback against the strong creationist influence in politics and public opinion in the US.

In any case, that caused me to inspect how ordinary people experience science. It's a little disconcerting.

Hey, if you want to trash the way the majority of media handles science communication and science journalism, and the general state of science literacy, I'm all with you! That, however, has exactly zero to do whether actual scientists do their science wrong. I'd like for you to carefully separate the two: in your thread title, you seem to conflate the way science is carried out and the way science is communicated, and your following posts didn't exactly make the distinction clearer. The thousands of evolutionary biologists working in the field are not adopting any religious traits in their work, so don't claim that. Whatever some stupid college teachers or journalists make out of it is an entirely different story.

Imagine a post-apocalyptic tribe that has inherited our base knowledge, but not the proofs of that knowledge. They believe in a heliocentric solar system, the cosmological model, germ theory, etc, but they have absolute no proof and no knowledge of the scientific method.

You basically talk about the general population today. Yes, science literacy is too low. You are preaching to the choir here.

The knowledge is passed down by priests, who memorize it. They believe, very firmly, in No God and secular humanism. Do these people have a religion?

Erm... do you have a religion because you assume that your computer works by actually doing calculations using electrons on its microscopic computer chip, as opposed to magic - even though you probably haven't checked it for yourself?

Many people, even most people, treat science like magic and scientists like priests.

Actually, my current occupation is that I am an actual real scientist. Bow to my authoritah, peasant! Snotty crap removed in post processing

It's a source of orthodox information, the approved world view, but they have no understanding of how it came to be. Even intellectuals do it...the other day I was talking about how food preferences can be passed from mother to child, and someone said, "I refuse to believe that memories can be passed..." What? Why do you need to believe anything - it's science, you know or you don't.

That's science for you? you know or you don't. That's not how science works. There are degrees of belief depending on the quality of data and plausibility.

People get VERY attached to their theories, especially those they use to form their world views. Consider dark matter - what is that but some idea a physicist made up to plug a hole in a theory/observation set. The whole idea is fairly new, and considering how cosmological theories come and go, it likely has a short life span.

Ok, that's a bit underwhelming now. You think the majority of scientists believe dark matter to exist because it's some kind of religious truth? Something tells me you don't know much about astrophysics, do you?

But some folks just can't handle having unknowns, or worse, unknowables. They will *believe* anything to avoid that hole.

And again, you think that's the reason a majority of (astro)physicists believe that dark matter exists? Have you ever attempted to understand the different strands of independent evidence we have for it before making such insulting claims?

Consider Marxist-Leninism. It went from a political philosophy to a state religion. Like it or not, religion plays a part in human social organization. When we move beyond ethnic chiefdoms to multiethnic states, historically, religion has been the glue. In the USSR, is seems that in some horrid way Communism became a substitute for the binding religion, and began to take on religious traits. They pickled their prophet and made him a shrine. They have a holy book, and persecute heretics. There are zealots and true believers, etc. Hell, in the PRC people pray to Mao.

Yeah yeah, the Communist state doctrine sucks... what's your point here?

See, I'm kind of purist with science.

Then you should try to understand a bit better what you are talking about. You misrepresented how science works and strongly misrepresented the motivations behind the scientific consensus concerning dark matter.

I REALLY don't want to see a similar process occur, creating Science instead of just doing science.

I don't know what that means-

That's one of the reasons I have a religion, to make sure that part of my psyche is occupied. Now y'all can explode,

Kablaam.

because I'm stretching the definition of 'religion' to breaking. I don't use that word myself, I use 'dharma' - teachings, a classification of constituents of the entire material and mental world. Atheism isn't a religion, but secular humanism is a dharma. State communism certainly is. And I really don't want science to be - it should remain, simply, a process of investigation, nothing more.

Science is done by human beings, and they are fallible and prone to all kinds of weaknesses as well as prejudice. You still haven't convinced me that there is a noticeable problem of current science being elevated to a religion. Above you've tried to use dark matter as an example. But it is a terrible example because you criticise the scientific consensus, which you are not competent enough to do in general, instead of the public perception of science, which is more viable.

BTW, one of the bits of Buddhism I follow is called 'Right Speech', meaning not lying and not using language to damage your community. Meaning I don't like snotty crap, just saying.

What do I care whether your religion forbids snotty crap. Mine does not. I'll still take you seriously though if your contributions deserve it.