As to the first section, your right. I mispoke, and hopefully my above post corrects that.
C Elegans wrote:A fundamental question to ask when we investigate the basis of people's way of thinking is always: "what would make you change your mind?". If a scientist holds a certain view, s/he will always change her mind if objective evidence points in another direction and his or her first view was falsified. What will make a religious person stop believing in the existence of a god?
For other people, I don't know. I've spent my whole life questioning and searching, just like scientists spend years in college learning what it is they need to do. Asking me to define and explain what it is that makes me belief what I believe would be like asking you condense all of the learning you've accumulated through all of this time.
You've delved into science, head first. Most of the explinations you could give me on the subjects you deal with would seem like gibberish to me. Why, I haven't the experience or knowledge you do. The reverse would be the same.
What makes sense to me, I hold onto. Somethings I KNOW based on the experiences I've been through. Others, I'm lost on, just theories. Still others, things people pose to me, I discount as nonsense based on what I've found out.
In what way does it give safer knowledge to walk around at the moon than to make observations with instruments? Do you believe human senses and human interpretation of their senses are infallible? You know they are not. People can feel and believe they feel or experience all sorts of things. There is no guarantee that what humans perceive with their senses is more true than what is registered by a spectrometer, for instance. On the contrary, empiric in vivo observation (experiencing things with your own senses), one of many methods to collect data, actually show a lot less reliability and validity than reconstruction and replication.
Thats all true yes, people's senses can, and often do fail. Personal belief's, strange occurances, environmental factors, etc can play with your sense. The same goes for instruments too though. If I look at a picture, could I not see things and interpret them incorrectly? Could the picture have been distorted and not have the true view of what it should have? Could the reconstruction being done not be influenced by a persons beliefs and therefore be off?
Just as you happen to use tools for your research, ones you have learned and been trained to use I have my own. Ones you haven't bothered to exercise or learn of. Who's to say which are better, or whether they can be applied to the same things even?
"Just a theory" is the argument the US creationist use when they argue evolution did not happen, and the flaw with this argument is that they fail to understand that like Vicsun and Frogus describes, everything is "just a theory", no absolute knowledge exists about the world (maths is a different thing sicne it defines its' own axioms). A scientific theory must fulfil specific criteria, whereas a belief, any belief, must not. There is a difference between justified and unjustified belief.
My beliefs don't have to fulfill my own criteria to be acknowledged as something more than a theory and as a truth? I don't simply shake a hat with letters and dump it out and whatever phrase comes out I regard as truth. I go about looking at things and deciding what fits.
I don't go about discounting the theories given by scientists unless I have proof they are wrong. I won't accept something without proof. However, sufficient proof for something is a personal matter IMO. Looking back at what scientists have done, some have given up on the basis they couldn't go any further. Others have picked up their work, and succeeded, needing more proof, and finding it to prove them right, or wrong.
Religious "theories" (like god exists, Muhammed is the only profet of god, Christ was resurrected, etc) are not falsifiable. All scientific theories are falsifiable. Science is a self-revising process with an inbuilt system for revision. Religion aims to present everlasting "truths" about the world.
Who's to say they aren't falsifiable? Because many blindly believe them? I am constantly revising my beliefs and views on the world and my religion. I use what I know, what I sense, to allow my beliefs to evolve. There is no point in grasping onto a belief that is outdated and flawed. Some old things are still applicable and worth keeping. Others however, in time don't apply so well. I discard those that won't be applied, and find something better to replace them.
Having faith in religious beliefs, means believing something without a systemic set of evidence. One of the major points in the big monotheistic religions is that you should believe without evidence - that is the very nature of faith.
Which is why I discard such things from my personal beliefs. They don't fit with the criteria I use to form what beliefs I do have.
I don't have any evidence that religious dogma have been useful for decreasing suffering and improving human life. So I like working with science. That's a choice I have made based on evidence that science is useful. Again, justified belief differs from faith.
Hmm, I'll agree with you in part there. Much of the large religious structures are corrupt and do more harm than good. It doesn't mean all do so.
I've simply tried looking at the basis behind both approaches. Not what they've done, not what they are doing, or can do. The origination. IMO faith in something that was beyond the knowledge of what was known at the time led to science. Thats it, I've never been very good at explaining things right off, my mind runs in circles.
However, I'd have to say that my religious beliefs incorporate well, a version of the scientific method. I won't and can't follow blindly. I question, and when I do, I require answers before stepping forward with those beliefs. Yet, where did that scientific method come from? That's been my point. I believe the origins of religion led to the origins of science.
The rest I could care less about, since it comes into personal views and differing approaches to looking for knowledge. Unless I go through all of the same learning and experiences with science that you have, and you go through all of the experiences and learning I have, we won't see the same things the same way. However, at that moment where science drifted away from religion, I'd have to say everyone could see things without all of that specialization being needed.