Is There a Difference Between Trusting Scientists and Trusting Preachers?

[The Grand Nudger]

Get that money!  I'll be around.

[Rhondazvous]

Another trouble is that the results of science aren't simple truths, they are often theory dependent, with shades of grey and degrees of certainty.

To give an example from a field I know (risking to sound like a broken record) - so people were using the Large Hadron Collider to look for the Higgs Boson, a particle that had been predicted by a very successful theory in which it was pretty much the last undiscovered piece. Now, in 2012 a discovery was announced because a deviation of ~5 standard deviations from the null hypothesis (no new physical effect beyond the known ones takes place) was seen.

Now, if you want to interpret this, you have to unravel a whole series of assumptions and observations.  First of all, was it a real discovery or a statistical fluke? The more measurements in different places you make, the more likely it becomes to see a 5 standard deviations fluke. This possibility was discarded because first of all, 5 sigma was still very unlikely to occur in the same place in two experiments, but also because of theoretical prior knowledge telling you that a particle is expected in this and this place with such and such properties, and the signals matched this expectation within experimental accuracy. Ok, so you have convinced yourself that it is not a fluke, and the signal looks like a new particle. But what particle? Is it *the* Higgs boson your theory predicted, and what does that even mean. So you keep measuring and the error bars shrink and the properties of the new thing are still within the predicted ones from your theory. Still, you haven't measured everything and there is still wiggle room because measurements always have error bars, and the new thing could be something closely related to the theoretically predicted Higgs Boson, but not exactly the same thing. Especially since you know that the very theory that gave you the prediction of the Higgs boson doesn't really describe the Masses of Neutrinos nor Dark Matter and therefore is necessarily incomplete, so the Higgs boson you discovered cannot possibly be *exactly* the one your theory predicted. Initially, they hadn't really measured the spin of the thing yet, and the relative certainty that it was a spin-0 particle like a Higgs boson is supposed to be, came as much from actual measurements of its spin as from the knowledge that it would be a huge coincidence for particles of spin-2 to accurately reproduce all the properties expected from the Higgs boson.

So after all those considerations, what do you tell everyone? CERN Director General Rolf Heuer on July 4, 2012 put it thusly:
"As a layman, I would say, I think we have it"

In the hedging and slight vagueness of those words lie all the considerations I outlined above, and probably more I don't even know.

As a lay person, I could ask you first what you mean by deviation. What is deviating and what is it deviating from and how do you know this? Or I can go back to your example of trusting my car mechanic and be done with it.

[Rhondazvous]

Trusting the expertise of scientists is no different than trusting the expertise of an auto mechanic.

I would not bring my vehicle to a mechanic whose only credential is a claim to authority:

"I have never repaired a car before but I have a book that tells me everything I need to know."

I would not trust this mechanic. Especially if the book was written in 1949.

Or: I haven't looked under the hood yet, but I just had a personal revelation that you need to buy a new motor.

And I don't know exactly how the motor is connected to the carbonator, but I know a guy who knows everything and I'll let him guide my hands. By the way, if I fuck your car up, it won't be his fault. I'll take cash now.

[Homeless Nutter]

True .... bad example, but I still consider life came from non life, even if life came from another planet ....

But then it could be argued that that would just push evolution back to the point and place where non life became life .....

Yes - it seems likely, that life originated spontaneously from a combination of amino-acids, but we haven't yet been able to replicate, or observe that process. And we very well may never be, if it requires a very rare and particular set of circumstances, or a huge time-frame. Unlike with evolution - we don't have the luxury of archaeological evidence of early life, or abiogenesis.

If panspermia turns out to be true - for example, if we discover other life in nearby space - that will probably only complicate the issue, because it's difficult enough trying to learn and replicate conditions of one particular planet, billions of years ago. If early lifeforms or precursors of life came from somewhere else in space - well, that would mean, that circumstances necessary for actual creation of life may be different, than those present in Earths primordial soup.

[Rhondazvous]

"It's reasonable to believe X because you can't prove X wrong" is the argument from ignorance. A logical fallacy. It's not a sensible position for anyone trying to be scientific to take. Someone would only take it with a conclusion they want to be true. Why else why you start from a specific conclusion and work backwards?

Just saying "You can't prove X to be wrong" is simply observing it's (currently) unfalsifiable. Science doesn't deal with such useless claims.

https://youtu.be/BzxMXzdaxtI

Yet, it has been proven that X is totally wrong, impossible, improbable and otherwise nonexistent.

When you take a deity out of the ineffable never world of heaven and put it into human history, you make it not only falsifiable but false.

[Alex K]

Or: I haven't looked under the hood yet, but I just had a personal revelation that you need to buy a new motor.

And I don't know exactly how the motor is connected to the carbonator, but I know a guy who knows everything and I'll let him guide my hands. By the way, if I fuck your car up, it won't be his fault. I'll take cash now.

If you have a carbonator in your motor, that would also be quite esoteric

[Alex K]

---

Another trouble is that the results of science aren't simple truths, they are often theory dependent, with shades of grey and degrees of certainty.

To give an example from a field I know (risking to sound like a broken record) - so people were using the Large Hadron Collider to look for the Higgs Boson, a particle that had been predicted by a very successful theory in which it was pretty much the last undiscovered piece. Now, in 2012 a discovery was announced because a deviation of ~5 standard deviations from the null hypothesis (no new physical effect beyond the known ones takes place) was seen.

Now, if you want to interpret this, you have to unravel a whole series of assumptions and observations.  First of all, was it a real discovery or a statistical fluke? The more measurements in different places you make, the more likely it becomes to see a 5 standard deviations fluke. This possibility was discarded because first of all, 5 sigma was still very unlikely to occur in the same place in two experiments, but also because of theoretical prior knowledge telling you that a particle is expected in this and this place with such and such properties, and the signals matched this expectation within experimental accuracy. Ok, so you have convinced yourself that it is not a fluke, and the signal looks like a new particle. But what particle? Is it *the* Higgs boson your theory predicted, and what does that even mean. So you keep measuring and the error bars shrink and the properties of the new thing are still within the predicted ones from your theory. Still, you haven't measured everything and there is still wiggle room because measurements always have error bars, and the new thing could be something closely related to the theoretically predicted Higgs Boson, but not exactly the same thing. Especially since you know that the very theory that gave you the prediction of the Higgs boson doesn't really describe the Masses of Neutrinos nor Dark Matter and therefore is necessarily incomplete, so the Higgs boson you discovered cannot possibly be *exactly* the one your theory predicted. Initially, they hadn't really measured the spin of the thing yet, and the relative certainty that it was a spin-0 particle like a Higgs boson is supposed to be, came as much from actual measurements of its spin as from the knowledge that it would be a huge coincidence for particles of spin-2 to accurately reproduce all the properties expected from the Higgs boson. If you see so many more than expected that it is 5 standard deviations away from the expected number, it is a priori so unlikely that such a large fluctuation appears by chance, that one usually assumes that a new phenomenon was discovered

So after all those considerations, what do you tell everyone? CERN Director General Rolf Heuer on July 4, 2012 put it thusly:
"As a layman, I would say, I think we have it"

In the hedging and slight vagueness of those words lie all the considerations I outlined above, and probably more I don't even know.

---

As a lay person, I could ask you first what you mean by deviation. What is deviating and what is it deviating from and how do you know this?

Excellent question. That's not too hard to understand. Imagine you perform a series of particle collisions, and you calculate how often pairs of photons with, say Energies between 120...130 GeV should come out of the collision - based on your theory without a Higgs boson in it. Imagine your calculation says it should be a 100 photon pairs *on average*. Basic statistics then tells you (roughly speaking) that it is nevertheless 17% likely that you get 110 or more photon pairs by chance. That's one standard deviation; and that it is only 2.5% likely that you get 120 photon pairs or more by chance. That would be two standard deviations. It's how much more often of some kind of event you measure occurs than is expected from your "null hypothesis" theory prediction

[SteveII]

I will clarify since this has become disjointed.

You're not clarifying, you're trying to split the baby - and that's fine...but that -is- what I'm asking you about.

1. If a religious belief conflicts with a scientific fact, it should be discarded. Scientific fact can disprove a religious claim if the religious claim is making statements about the natural world--how the world is. (for example: world is center of the universe, sickness is a judgement from God, the earth is 6000 years old, and other traditional god-of-the-gaps beliefs that have been dismissed). 
2. Scientific facts have no bearing on the possibility of supernatural causes because claims of supernatural causes do not make claims about the natural world. In fact, when weighing whether a supernatural event happened, we rely on science to tell us if a natural cause is possible/probable.]

b-mine.

Then there's no need to reference a metric that you do not accept as applicable.  You have not done so, you've simply termed those contradictory narratives "supernatural" and so exempt from the criteria that -you- proposed.  The one cannot be consistently maintained in the face of the other.  So which should we do, and why, again.....?

The trouble doesn't end there, ofc.

The world -is- the center of the universe, supernaturally.
Sickness -is- a judgement from god, supernaturally.
The earth -is- 6000 years old, supernaturally.

You cannot consistently dismiss these, unless your opinion on the exemption of the supernatural is abandoned and we re-assume the previously abandoned metrics.

Not only are you proposing inconsistent metrics, you're inconsistently -applying- them.  It's all a hot fucking mess and there's no point to it whatsoever.  You have not done what you propose should be done, and that's okay..because, according to your own comments, it cannot -be- done.  You don't believe in the silly shit™, but it's not for the rationalizations presented to us here.

I understand your point but my reply is that you need to distinguish between a religious claim that a miracle (supernaturally caused event) has occurred and a religious belief that makes a claim about the world/how it works/the way things are. With this distinction, scientific fact can certainly prove religious beliefs about how the world works to be wrong. 

We need to examine miracles some more. On one hand, supernatural interventions in the affairs of the normal course of nature are an exception, not the rule. So for proper belief that such an event has occurred, one has to have reasons for thinking so. Among other things (like theology and common sense), scientific facts can be used to examine the circumstances and reasons and if it is found that a known natural explanation is more likely, then it is more reasonable to assume no supernatural causation. However, because there is some possibility that supernatural agency was involved, it can not be ruled out 100%. So, while we can't be sure an event was not effected by a supernatural agent, I don't think we are warranted to claim so without reasons (which themselves are verifiable).

[The Grand Nudger]

I understand your point but my reply is that you need to distinguish between a religious claim that a miracle (supernaturally caused event) has occurred and a religious belief that makes a claim about the world/how it works/the way things are. With this distinction, scientific fact can certainly prove religious beliefs about how the world works to be wrong. 

Not unless science can, indeed, comment upon what the claimants believe to be supernatural.  Contrary to your previous remarks.  

We need to examine miracles some more.  On one hand, supernatural interventions in the affairs of the normal course of nature are an exception, not the rule. So for proper belief that such an event has occurred, one has to have reasons for thinking so. Among other things (like theology and common sense), scientific facts can be used to examine the circumstances and reasons and if it is found that a known natural explanation is more likely, then it is more reasonable to assume no supernatural causation. However, because there is some possibility that supernatural agency was involved, it can not be ruled out 100%. So, while we can't be sure an event was not effected by a supernatural agent, I don't think we are warranted to claim so without reasons (which themselves are verifiable).

We don't, and it would be a sad day if we did.....since there aren't any to examine.  You're no longer talking about discarding contradictory narratives, mind you..you're fielding an argument from ignorance..which is -exactly- what you said should be discarded.  In fact, it's the only example you chose to expressly include.

If a person holds religious beliefs that are opposed to scientific fact, then they are really not true religious beliefs (perhaps a god-of-the-gaps belief) and should be discarded.

B-mine, and so the question remains..should we discard these beliefs or exempt them through rationalizations? Why, either way?

[SteveII]

I understand your point but my reply is that you need to distinguish between a religious claim that a miracle (supernaturally caused event) has occurred and a religious belief that makes a claim about the world/how it works/the way things are. With this distinction, scientific fact can certainly prove religious beliefs about how the world works to be wrong. 

Not unless science can, indeed, comment upon what the claimants believe to be supernatural.  Contrary to your previous remarks.  

We need to examine miracles some more.  On one hand, supernatural interventions in the affairs of the normal course of nature are an exception, not the rule. So for proper belief that such an event has occurred, one has to have reasons for thinking so. Among other things (like theology and common sense), scientific facts can be used to examine the circumstances and reasons and if it is found that a known natural explanation is more likely, then it is more reasonable to assume no supernatural causation. However, because there is some possibility that supernatural agency was involved, it can not be ruled out 100%. So, while we can't be sure an event was not effected by a supernatural agent, I don't think we are warranted to claim so without reasons (which themselves are verifiable).

We don't, and it would be a sad day if we did.....since there aren't any to examine.  You're no longer talking about discarding contradictory narratives, mind you..you're fielding an argument from ignorance..which is -exactly- what you said should be discarded.  In fact, it's the only example you chose to expressly include.

If a person holds religious beliefs that are opposed to scientific fact, then they are really not true religious beliefs (perhaps a god-of-the-gaps belief) and should be discarded.

B-mine, and so the question remains..should we discard these beliefs or exempt them through rationalizations?  Why, either way?

First, a real miracle would not be opposed to scientific fact. It is simply non-natural causation and not violating anything except the idea of a closed system (a metaphysical question and not a scientific one). However the claim of a real miracle can be examined and are not exempt from scrutiny by science and other fields. The fact that we cannot be certain does not mean we cannot assign a low probability and dismiss beliefs of low probability. 

We should discard god-of-the-gaps beliefs if there is no other reason to believe supernatural causation. But God creating the universe and life are not god-of-the-gaps beliefs. We might not know how this came about, but we believe because it is core to theology that he did.