Summer means no religion or politics?

[Misj']

That's a great post there, Misj'. Now, would you mind going to play outside while the adults talk?

Seriously. Khris has so far been one of the most level-headed people in this thread, and I daresay his understanding of science is a fair bit better than that of most people who posted here.

Just to be certain...do you think that KhrisMUC's understanding of science is 'a fair bit better' than for example mine?

[Matti]

Misj:

While it's true that Khris gets a little harsh sometimes, I don't agree to the rest of what you've just posted.

1. If your claim that Khris view of science is "flat-out incorrect" is based on your opinion that scientist are within the laziest and inproductive people on earth and that the theory of scientific methodology doesn't even come close to reality, then I just can't take you seriously. Not only scientists but even philosophers work very picky when it comes to keeping the conditions and methods they learned to use.. and if they don't they will be mostly ignored and not credited. But this has already been said several times (by Khris at least).

2. Regarding Lionmonkey I fully support KhrisMUC. I wouldn't say that he necessarily lacks basic logic, but all he does is throw in some rethorical phrases and questions, but almost never answers the questions / replies to the statements that he quotes. For that reason I already started ignoring him.

[miguel]

Okay, if you guys are going THIS personal about this thread then I want you to know that you shouldn't count me in.
The reason we know each other is the love for adventure games, coding, art, etc... Science, Religion and whatever else is something we must stay cool about it, and realize that person A (that I love for his games) may not have the same opinion regarding other subjects.
So, personal issues aside, let me continue:

Akatosh, when you claim that sceptics reason to be is to attack the beliefs of others then in no way I will ever give you any credit. If you think about it, you have just made anti-sceptics job easier.
If that is not the case then please rephrase yourself and I will retract myself if needed. I don't want to start a personal war with you or anybody.
My friend, this days you don't have someone forcing you to believe in anything, you are free. Meaning your view of the world is like the old guys from the Muppet's show.

On a final note, Misj and KhrisMUC are both intelligent and we should let them deal with it without our help. 

[Misj']

1. If your claim that Khris view of science is "flat-out incorrect" is based on your opinion that scientist are within the laziest and inproductive people on earth and that the theory of scientific methodology doesn't even come close to reality, then I just can't take you seriously.

You refer to a single post of mine that was clearly sarcastic (many of the German people that I know understand sarcasm...apparently some don't). Have you read any of the other posts I wrote?

[Matti]

Okay, sorry, Misj, must have missed that. Usually I get sarcasm, but with so many unbelievable things that have been in this thread it becomes hard to tell what has been meant seriously or not.

I will reread your last posts and try to get your point about why Khris' view on science is so wrong, unless of course, you want to quickly repeat it in a nutshell.

[Akatosh]

Akatosh, when you claim that sceptics reason to be is to attack the beliefs of others then in no way I will ever give you any credit. If you think about it, you have just made anti-sceptics job easier.
If that is not the case then please rephrase yourself and I will retract myself if needed. I don't want to start a personal war with you or anybody.
My friend, this days you don't have someone forcing you to believe in anything, you are free. Meaning your view of the world is like the old guys from the Muppet's show.

Yeah, it's entirely possible we fell victim to a misunderstand here, so first, lemme throw some definitions around. The term "skepticism" comes from the old Greek word skeptomai (or 'σκέπτομαι'), which means to look about, to consider. It's a method of inquiry, of obtaining knowledge through systematic doubt and continual testing (as Wikipedia eloquently puts it), and I consider myself a skeptic in exactly that sense. If you don't bring forwards arguments against a belief or theory, how could you check out its consistency and/or validity? If you don't try to poke holes in theories, analyze implications and possible consequences, show contradictions and so on... how could you find out if there is a rebuttal, if the faith or theory can be defended? The best way to find out if a theory could be valid or not still is to try and disprove it. Similar things go for philosophy.

I apologise if my usage of the term "attack" implied something I didn't mean it to. I meant that critical thought should be applied to religion as well as other philosophies and theories. And of course, doubting involves bringing forward arguments against something. That is the basis of critical thinking. I hope we have just fallen victim to a misunderstanding here, as "anti-skepticism" would ultimately be the end of rational thought.

And Waldorf and Statler are awesome, although they have no relevance to the debate at hand (as those two are all about personal taste, not organised rational doubting). If those were the only choices available, however, I'd much rather be like them than Douglas Adam's Electrical Monk (which is what true anti-skepticism would be).

[miguel]

Waldorf and Statler are indeed awesome .
I agree with doubting the veracity of things as I constantly do it myself, although it is established that faith is something far more intriguing than any other way of thinking.
Science led you to quantum levels where anything can happen and logic fails to take the domain for itself as it reaches a abstract connection with our world. It's there and scientists claim to prove it but still it's way beyond my understanding. Maybe it's just me and my poor scientific knowledge no matter how many articles I read.
Philosophy is a realm where any given fact can be denied for the sake of it and again I fail to connect or have the strength to dive deeper into it as it would clearly force me to chose between insanity or just a particular study I might find interesting.
Even art as shown us how abstract our minds can be and taken us away from fine craftsmanship to odd triggering of the brain where red squares and white squares can represent everything.
Faith is something so simple but at the same time almost unachievable for some.
I sometimes think that the way our genes develop into the unknown future can separate the ability/malfunction to believe in the divine. If so, science still has a long way to prove it right or wrong.     

[Khris]

Misj:
Calm down. Lionmonkey clearly exhibits a serious lack of consistency in his arguments; I'm sure you as the ultimate authority on logic, reason and science can see that.
I suspect him to be either trolling or pulling arguments out of his ass, so I responded one last time to see what he comes up with next. My post was arrogant, true, because I felt it's probably a waste of time writing it.

"each of your flawed arguments are a direct copy-paste from others"
Kindly explain if you meant "other participants" or "other posts" or something else. Either way I can assure you everything I copy-paste ends up as quote.

You seem to have made a very bad personal experience with the world of science that left you frustrated and angry. But you seem to extend your hatred to include the underlying methodology (which is usually what I mean when I use the word "science"); I'm curious why.

[Misj']

I will reread your last posts and try to get your point about why Khris' view on science is so wrong, unless of course, you want to quickly repeat it in a nutshell.

A common misconception (apparent in most posts at either side in this discussion) is that in essence science equals obtaining knowledge and advancements/progress; this view of science is based on the original Latin meaning of the word (meaning "knowledge"). As an example I'll use one of your own posts (please don't kill me for that; it is just a very nice example):

And I really can't believe what has been said about science in this thread. Science is when a caveman takes a stick and puts something sharp on its end to have a tool to take down a mammoth as well as programming a chip to create something like Skynet.

Science is people. People are science. Please don't try to seperate science from humans like it's some sort of extraordinary subject some crazy fools are learning. In every human there's a scientist.

In this example you define science as a synonym to research; truth is however, that science is a field within research but not a synonym. Science is the discipline of research that concerns the mechanisms (the way things work) of the universe, and tries to unravel these mechanisms based on objective observations. Other fields of research (like quantum physics, mathematics, arts, philosophy, theology, technique development (and inventions), sociology, medicine, etc) concern other aspects...although many of these fields of research use knowledge obtained from another field in order to advance (science often uses mathematics and philosophy, art can use knowledge obtained from for example medicine (anatomy), etc).

It should be noted, that non of these fields of research is superior to any of the other (although some are - falsely - given a higher worth)...equally, however, if someone makes claims that exceed the limits of a certain field and claim to base it solely on that particular field than their 'claims' should be regarded as based on a false understanding and thus a false basis. This doesn't necessarily imply that the claims themselves are false(hoods), but a sceptic should dismiss them regardless.

Another thing is, that 'pure'/'strict' science hardly exists (and might even be impossible for a number of reasons). This is, however, not a problem - not even to a sceptic - as long as it is clear that the researcher knows the limits and handles them correctly. This is also, why I don't 'believe in science'...I do believe in research however, and I consider the scientific method the best for a certain type of questions (those questions that concern its field (mechanisms)).

Of course in society, science is put on a higher plane than any other method of research; as a consequence the term 'science' is used for many things that are in reality not science ('computer science' is a clear example...) often in order to give something more 'worth'. In the end, however, this is a threat to science itself, because as soon as people loose sight of what science truly is, the chances are highly increased that conclusions based thereon are flawed and incorrect.



Ps. On a side-note, I had a colleague of mine read your text, and he thought that your view of science lead you to conclude that science was the cause of evil (weapons). I pointed out that this was not the case, but he doubted me based on your examples (the sharp stick, and skynet).

[Khris]

There's a nice definition in the wikipedia article:

Science is a continuing effort to discover and increase human knowledge and understanding through disciplined research. Using controlled methods, scientists collect observable evidence of natural or social phenomena, record measurable data relating to the observations, and analyze this information to construct theoretical explanations of how things work. The methods of scientific research include the generation of hypotheses about how phenomena work, and experimentation that tests these hypotheses under controlled conditions. Scientists are also expected to publish their information so other scientists can do similar experiments to double-check their conclusions. The results of this process enable better understanding of past events, and better ability to predict future events of the same kind as those that have been tested.

This is what people here think of when using the term "science", as far as I can see. At least I do.

And all the talk about beauty, arts, and proving love doesn't change the fact that all major religions make claims that contradict even strictly mechanical scientific knowledge.

[Misj']

Calm down. Lionmonkey clearly exhibits a serious lack of consistency in his arguments; I'm sure you as the ultimate authority on logic, reason and science can see that.

Although I never said - nor considered myself - to be the ultimate authority on anything. However, Lionmonkey - although I will admit that I haven't read everything he wrote - made only a single claim about science (and since I try to stick to the misconceptions about science in this thread that would have been the only thing to respond to), and that was the 'we can't know anything'-argument. You responded to this with:

Of course you can stomp your feet and close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears and sing "LALALA", but that won't change the fact that your line of argumentation ("we can't know anything for sure") is nonconstructive, useless and downright silly in the light that all constructive work is based on ignoring the conclusion you seem to draw from that ("give up on finding out anything about anything") and thus delivers and delivers.

So in short you said that the "we can't know anything (for sure)" is non-constructive...however, this line of reasoning (that we can't know anything) is the entire basis of Descarte's philosophy, which in turn is considered to be one of the pillars of modern science. So logic would lead one to conclude that stating that the 'we can't know anything'-argument is non-constructive ultimately leads to the conclusion that one of the pillars of modern science is non-constructive, and thus that the scientific method is non-constructive. This is in direct disagreement with your entire argumentation, and could therefore be considered a serious lack of consistency.

"each of your flawed arguments are a direct copy-paste from others"
Kindly explain if you meant "other participants" or "other posts" or something else. Either way I can assure you everything I copy-paste ends up as quote.

Let me put it this way: based on what you write I suspect you are (or have been) a (regular?) visitor of sites like the rational response squad, because many of your arguments were extremely similar to the arguments that I've read on sites like that...there are of course other possible explanations that include 'coincidental similarity'; but each of them is less likely.

You seem to have made a very bad personal experience with the world of science that left you frustrated and angry.

Again...I am not at all frustrated and angry at the world of science. I am however frustrated (if you would want to call it that) by people's misconceptions about science. I am not fighting science, but your misconceptions here (by the way: what are your personal experiences with the world of science?)

But you seem to extend your hatred to include the underlying methodology (which is usually what I mean when I use the word "science")

I never attacked the underlying methodology. It is the best approach within the realm of science. However, you don't seem to understand the realm of science (or its limits) and therefore seem to think that that this methodology should be applied to any field of research. This is incorrect, and will eventually lead to incorrect, irrational, and illogical conclusions.

This is what people here think of when using the term "science", as far as I can see. At least I do.

And this proves exactly my point (thank you WikiPedia): the common concept about what science is (and the idea that you propagate) is incorrect, because they don't understand the difference between science (Wissenschaft) and research (Forschung). Consequently, all reasoning based on these misconceptions are intrinsically (and ultimately) flawed.

[Khris]

Lionmonkey thinks that it's useless to try to find out how something works because everything we perceive might be an illusion and although we know why a light bulb lights up if we send current through it, it might stop doing that tomorrow.
(Please do read his earlier posts on that subject, he used the example of billions of coin tosses coming up with heads.)
Science does the exact opposite; it assumes that there is an actual reality and that a well-established concept such as the mechanism causing light being emitted by gas inside a light bulb won't suddenly stop being valid.

Of course I'm aware that "we can't know anything for sure"; the non-constructiveness I accused Lionmonkey of comes into play when you remove the "for sure":
I repeatedly explained to him that his approach to facts might be correct in theory and explicitly said myself that "fact != 100% truth", yet it is still completely impractical to regard facts as a result of biased chance. (And downright silly. Of course you can doubt everything, but then any progress comes to a screeching halt.)

In order to get results, it is completely okay to simply assume something. We rely on assumptions all the time and we usually keep them as long as there's nothing to suggest they aren't true. As soon as there is, we usually ditch them. We do this constantly in our daily life. Science more or less works the same way.
Lionmonkey won't have any of that, his position is that one can't/mustn't assume anything, much less know anything.

You accusing me of a lack of consistency in respect to this issue points to you not having read the bulk of Lionmonkey's and my exchange about it.
_

I know the rational response squad, and I have visited their site once or twice in the past. I can assure you though, everything I write here is phrased my me, using exclusively my head. I really don't need to rephrase other people's statements to express my views on this subject.
_

You don't need to translate words into German, please. I don't have any idea why you keep writing about misconceptions of science and what it really means.
It doesn't matter if the common concept of what science means is something other than what you preceive it to mean as long as everybody involved (except you) knows what is meant.
I agree there are cases were it's important to remind people of the actual meaning of a word ("evolution is just a theory"), but I can't see how this applies to the use of "science" in this thread.

I rather get the feeling that this is a matter of different opinions, not definitions, so let me state mine very clearly:
I'm confident that science (in the meaning of the wikipedia excerpt quoted above) is capable of addressing every question that is relevant to me except those I can answer myself.
I.e. I don't need science to appreciate a piece of art, but I don't need anything else to answer more universal questions.
I think that our existence is sort of a cosmic accident without a special purpose and that there's nothing besides energy and matter anywhere.

Regarding science and research: it has always been my understanding (as I'm sure you're aware by now) that research is a part of science, not the other way round. Please give me an example of research outside of what you understand as science.

[SSH]

Science does the exact opposite; it assumes that there is an actual reality and that a well-established concept such as the mechanism causing light being emitted by gas inside a light bulb won't suddenly stop being valid.

Most light from light bulbs is emitted by the phosphor or the filament, but I'm sure your grasp of science is awesome 

[NsMn]

Shhhhh, SSH. Be quiet. He's German, he can't talk about normal light bulbs.

[Misj']

I agree there are cases were it's important to remind people of the actual meaning of a word ("evolution is just a theory"), but I can't see how this applies to the use of "science" in this thread.

I do, since it is not about perception but about definition; even in a stricter sense that your example about the use of the word 'theory'.

Regarding science and research: it has always been my understanding (as I'm sure you're aware by now) that research is a part of science, not the other way round. Please give me an example of research outside of what you understand as science.

Mathematics, quantum physics, medicine, philosophy, theology, (many) social studies, art, inventions (technique development)...hmm, reminds me of the list that I've written in this thread many times before.

And because you consider it the wrong way around, your idea of science is incorrect, and most of your conclusions based on what you consider science are flawed.

It is - particularly for your view that is largely based on science (at least from your ideas about science) - essential to have a correct view of what science is, and what is science. Otherwise it is impossible to test whether something is or is not science (or 'within the realm of science'). One of the 'tests' that you've applied throughout this thread was whether knowledge was obtained...however, such 'knowledge' was easily dismissed as 'lies', 'fiction', 'fantasies', 'fairy tales' (and thus not science) as soon as it disagreed with what your consider true (and thus knowledge). In other words: your definition is only usable when science is considered a 'belief'...if you don't (and you don't), then your 'definition' is useless. 'My' definition on the other hand is functional and usable.

Ps. As I said: I didn't read all of LionMoney's posts (since most of them concerned subjects that I didn't find interesting or important)...I do however stick to my remark concerning this particular point (and in addition point to quantum physics).
Pps. I didn't translate it into German to be condescending, patronizing, or anything...just for clarity reasons. If I would have had this discussion with a Dutch person I would have used the Dutch translation (wetenschap and onderzoek) to make certain the definitions (and realms) are clear.

[Matti]

Most light from light bulbs is emitted by the phosphor or the filament, but I'm sure your grasp of science is awesome 

No, not most light from lightbulbs, but the light from most lightbulbs.. so what's your point?


@ Misj: I don't get you! You say the common definition of sience and research is wrong and it's the other way around. So mathematics, philosophy etc. are research, not sciences. And science is just a part of research...

Okay, nice, where do we go from here? And what's the point in reversing those two terms?

Sciences use strict methodology, so do mathematics and philosophy. When I do some maths for an economy game I'm working on, you call that research?

[Misj']

@ Misj: I don't get you! You say the common definition of sience and research is wrong and it's the other way around. So mathematics, philosophy etc. are research, not sciences. And science is just a part of research...

Okay, nice, where do we go from here? And what's the point in reversing those two terms?

Sciences use strict methodology, so do mathematics and philosophy. When I do some maths for an economy game I'm working on, you call that research?

There's a difference between 'method' and 'purpose' (yes, I know that's an open door, but you understand what I mean). Research must have a purpose*, while the 'understanding' obtained from different fields of research can be used as a tool (method) to achieve that goal (purpose).

So if you're writing a game to better understand economy (purpose), and implement mathematics (mathematical or statistical models) (method) then yes: it's research...but not the mathematics but the result of creating of the game itself.

* by the way...when I talk about art, I don't talk about the l'art pour l'art movement because that essentially rid art of its purpose. While art is a form of research with a purpose (some say it's a mirror of society (which increases our understanding of that society)), the l'art pour l'art-art are 'merely' pretty pictures. It can still have its function in society, but it has lost its 'research-purpose'...

[Khris]

Misj:
I did read that list. I'm interested in specific examples. So research in medicine isn't scientific? And how does one research art? Or is art research? Please explain.

My idea of science is what I quoted from Wikipedia. I don't see how my conclusions are incorrect just because you think science is something else.
Applying the scientific method/scientific research leads to obtained knowledge.
What I count as obtained knowledge is e.g. the Theory of Gravity. We know what gravity will do to bodies of mass beyond reasonable doubt.
You'll notice that there isn't a Fairy Theory though.
What about this simple distinction leads to you labeling my understanding of science as a belief?
You're just making bubbles with lots of words.

[Matti]

Yes, there is a difference between method and purpose. Science is the usage of certain methods. Research has a purpose and is trying to reach this goal using methods. So research is a part of science, the one that is trying to create tools or medicine..

[Snarky]

And this proves exactly my point (thank you WikiPedia): the common concept about what science is (and the idea that you propagate) is incorrect, because they don't understand the difference between science (Wissenschaft) and research (Forschung). Consequently, all reasoning based on these misconceptions are intrinsically (and ultimately) flawed.

A definition cannot be incorrect, because it merely the act of assigning a label to something. A definition may be more or less widely agreed on, it may be more or less useful, and it may cause particular statements that use the label to be true or false (or meaningless), but it can't be inherently wrong.*

The Wikipedia definition reflects the meaning or meanings that are generally intended when people use the word "science". Just because you don't think it's the most useful definition (because it covers two, in your opinion, separate concepts or whatever) doesn't make it incorrect. Nor does the fact that the word has different, supposedly more precise definitions in certain expert disciplines and schools of philosophical thought.


* At least as long as your definition is internally consistent. "Let x be a natural number greater than 10 and less than 2" would be a bad definition, even though it might not technically be "incorrect".