The new sheep-religion: "science"

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

I have permitted myself this liberty to speak in metaphors, I think the message might be clearer this way.

Upon entering this site and sharing my thoughts, I have noticed an immediate gag-reflex from many posters, as if I inserted the majestic sword of my reason into their little heads, and it was too much for them to handle. I have presented some concept that are so out of tune with the common folk-dance played over and over in the little park in the middle of the village, that the citizens have attacked me indignantly for bringing in oppressive lies and false notions.

But I am a reasonable man, and I do not hold a belief until it is tested. To paraphrase something that surfaced in a discussion with Faust, I test the theory against the facts before I test facts against a theory.

Now most of these angry citizens (of course I am speaking of a minority - the the band of boors who take it upon themselves to protect the village is not usually composed of the most enlightened or cultivated ones but rather of those who see no other way to make their influence felt but brutish behavior) have absolutely no affinity with empiricism or proof of any kind. Yet they scream about it the loudest. Everything with which they disagree is “unscientific”.

It hs clear that “science” is the new “God”. People just have to invoke it’s name to strike fear in their own hearts, and suspect that this fear is also struck in the heart of the one to whom their scream is addressed.

I believe in many strange things as much as I do in science, but never because someone has told me to believe it. In the coming times, it seems that the role of the church is taken over by the altar-boys of science - or rather the hordes of apes who fear the faculty of reason, and appeal to the magic word “science” to expel the threat of having to think.

Nothing could be more ironic, but irony is the way the dimmest minds always manifest in the eyes of brighter observers. It is due to operating on a level where chaos is the rule, but the objects of order are already in place. The lazy and stupid have access to the objects of the intellect, but they only able to grab hold of them like they handle their food: it is self-evident to them that these objects belong to them because their little hands have succeeded in grabbing them.

But these boors will be the enemy of both science and those fields of study that represent the world in new ways, ways that will, once understood, transform science. The boor with his clasping baby-hands is the new priest, the dogmatist who condemns the heretic for thinking outside the box.

2

There are quite a few physics cranks on this website. They would tell you that you are right on target. Many people would like to think that, by abandoning established science, they are thinking for themselves.

The reality is that there is a lot of pseudo-science out there that people are willing to buy into merely because of an anti-science attitude. People don’t like the idea that they simply do not have the time, training, experience, and resources to learn and follow much of contemporary science. What follows is that, for many, the difficult nuances of science are lost in a sea of plausible sounding noise.

3

Where I would agree with most of that, to call someone a crank without a perfectly formulated, logically airtight refutation of their statements is so thoroughly unscientific that is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I can’t stand the idea that such baseless refutations are actually thought of as representing science. They are nothing but the most primitive kind of religion.

4

By abandoning all the speculation based on current consensus in science, sure that can be thinking for oneself. Much of what gets dismissed as unscientific does not contradict science, but it doesn’t fit with the science groupie speculation that knowledge can only be gotten via science - and not, for example other kinds of empiricism as the OP points out - and also that science is really, well, just about complete. Most science groupies view new ideas though newtonian physics, determinism and reductionist viewpoints that much of the scientific community itself has moved past. The latter group may not realize all the implications of their having moved past these, but their research reflects it. And note: I am not saying that newtonian physics is wrong or that determinism as a model cannot be extremely useful or that reductionism per se is a poor heuristic choice.

5

I find generally that the science groupies have a fairly limited knowledge of science.

6

Exactly.
The grounds on which this is decided are of course nowhere to be found.
The only thing real science suggests to us now is that it is everything but complete - that we may have to revise our entire way of thinking about it to make some sense of it in light of myriads of phenomena waiting to be explained.

Along with a fairly limited intelligence.

7

Unexplained but empirically verifiable phenomena, such as telepathy and astrology, are called “supernatural”, on the ground that they cannot be explained using Newtonian particle physics.

Another supreme irony that this boorish qualification brings to light is that the very concept of organic life would by the same standards be “supernatural”. But not just that, the very observation of existence should be attributed to quacks and crackpots.

The ability provided by Newtonian physics to explain is overestimated ad absurdum.
It explains nothing - it explicates, makes explicit a certain relatively crude type of phenomena, and says nothing about the more subtle occurrences such as life and consciousness.

Belief in Netwonian physics, in the Law logic of determinism, even makes it logically impossible to think about the origin of existence. Not that this has prevented scientists to think about it - it has only prevented them from thinking about it logically. Hence, the Big Bang as the “beginning of time”…

8

What I’m skeptical towards is the notion that such things be empirically verifiable.

9

Well of course, scepsis is the beginning of all science.
But one cannot claim to support a scientific approach and at the same time refuse to do the work of empirical verification. (this is why I have commenced a project of verification in the rant house.)

In the current “scientific” (cultural) climate, such notions are rejected without any studies. Why? I can only guess, but it seems that it would be a challenge to the standing definitions of mind if such things did appear to exist.

That is not to say that it would actually challenge the foundations of science: astrology and telepathy are to a large extent explicable in terms of electromagnetic currents. There is no scientific ground to predict the non-existence of these phenomena, only political and religious grounds.

10

Perhaps some do so. But those who study these fields reject them on the grounds that they simply do not work. Whenever one controls for the possibility of fraud, neither telepathy nor astrology produce results.

Science can be applied to what might be supernatural. The problem with the supernatural is that so far it fails to produce any results.

Those who study cosmology rarely commit to the claim that we can say with certainty that there was a beginning of time. The big bang as the beginning of time is to a great extent a myth of popular science.

11

I’'ve never seen these studies, can you point me to some of them? My own studies have indicated the contrary. Of course these studies have been far from conclusive, but still they are progressing.

Perhaps you as a man of science, you would be willing to participate in my experiment.

The concept of a “beginning of time” is problematic, since “beginning” is a property of the concept time.

I have begun the question the notion of a Big Bang as an explosion from a point-like singularity. I’m not the only one who questions this.

talkorigins.org/faqs/astrono … onceptions

12

Aside from calling science a new religion, this seems much more like a rant topic than a religious one.

13

Telepathy might be explained by the fact that the subconscious may have the capacity to pick up on minutia and do amazing ‘calculations’ based on the info it receives…perhaps a consciousness trained to listen to the subconscious can pick up rather amazing things…

14

have Fixed Cross do your horoscope and then say that… i think the main problem is peoples suspicion that it is merely an astute observation of behavior or something…a trick…

15

what I would ask is a point relative to what? if it was the whole universe there was no exterior frame of reference,. and it is plausible that the laws or forms of cacpity for states of density would have been variant such as t o have allowed for the universe then to be exactly as it is now anyways…

16

if science is a system of belief then it is a religion…though perhaps one might say that rather it is at least meant to be a system for arriving at beliefs…a slight difference…however to many believe in it systematically so i would say that by definition it is actually a religion…

17

I would think that science has its value as does anything, but that it is leaning in to a form just like that of the organized church that might have similar results…

18

So far, I’m seeing nothing but fuzzy talk. Real science is constantly involved in disproving it’s theories if possible. I have no idea what is being called empirical proof here. Astrology is empirically proven? Really? Does this mean that it produces reliable predictions and that several people can look at the same data and produce the same results? Astrology has been used for millenia as a method of inquiry, but I have seen nothing that suggests empirical proof of it’s powers of prediction. The militaries of both the Soviets and the U.S. spent millions looking into telepathy and found nothing reliable.

Empirical proofs have to have at least a 51% success rate of prediction. Neither astrology or telepathy have ever been shown to come close. We can say that perhaps some day one or the other or both will be understood and capable of successful prediction, but at this point it is nothing but conjecture and speculation.

19

Normally, I would agree.
However, the timing is the key.
We’re in an age at this point where Religion and Science are both undergoing radical changes - though the surface of both don’t show it in mass just yet as everything that’s changing in both at this time is taking place in the more deeply inside circles of both fields.

For that reason, I think it’s appropriate that we start promoting more discussions on the matter of Science in it’s forward relationship to the sociological stance of faith and religion.

20

Astrology isn’t merely a peredictory of what will be but also gives incite into the nature of an individual that can be rather interesting…as far as seeing what will happen it is important to understand that knowing exactly what happens would change the future, as such knowing partially would seem to be all that is possible, as such some level of inaccuracy is inevitable…technically in predicting the future if the prediction was actually capable of being more than 50% accurate that would lend to changing the future, and thus no longer be a prediction, I would think…taking that into count the question is how often is it close to being 50% accurate?

plus one can look at the words…it is a matter of “prediction” not absolutely “knowing”