Science: Do we believe or do we accept?

[Okiebug61]

I have always thought of science as one big experiment with we humans being the G Pigs. When compared to secular religion IMO there is not much difference between the two.

Go ask Alice!

[Andrew, Jr.]

Science comes to a end conclusion after repeated testing. Data can be repeated, and the theories can change. Also, with the new research being done and clinical trials science changes each and every day.

I believe that as human beings we all have common sense to some degree - some more than others (think of those who are mentally ill, have head injuries, or have other health issues). So for the most part, most folks can reason out any decision that needs to be made should the situation come about.

We all also must consider each person has their own perceptions, own belief system, and own priorities. Not everyone will ever answer the same when faced with say a terminal illness.

[Toughy]

secular religion

huh??? I'm confused. secular means not connected with/to any religion

[Okiebug61]

Originally Posted by Toughy

huh??? I'm confused. secular means not connected with/to any religion

Secular religion is a term used to describe ideas, theories or philosophies which involve no spiritual component yet possess qualities similar to those of a religion. Such qualities include such things as dogma, a system of indoctrination, the prescription of an absolute code of conduct, an ideologically tailored creation story and end-times narrative, designated enemies, and unquestioning devotion to a higher authority. The secular religion operates in a secular society by filling a role which would be satisfied by a church or another religious authority.

Does this help? I was trying to point out that science has a way of not being connected to any specific thing yet has many ideas that are adopted by followers. IE: Believing a pill will cure an ill without really any specific determination that you have the illness. Putting us in the G Pig realm.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

Secular religion is a term used to describe ideas, theories or philosophies which involve no spiritual component yet possess qualities similar to those of a religion. Such qualities include such things as dogma, a system of indoctrination, the prescription of an absolute code of conduct, an ideologically tailored creation story and end-times narrative, designated enemies, and unquestioning devotion to a higher authority. The secular religion operates in a secular society by filling a role which would be satisfied by a church or another religious authority.

I can think of several examples of a secular religion (Ayn Randian Objectivism leaps to mind here as well as American Exceptionalism) but science is not a particularly good example of a secular religion.

Does this help?

No.

I was trying to point out that science has a way of not being connected to any specific thing yet has many ideas that are adopted by followers. IE: Believing a pill will cure an ill without really any specific determination that you have the illness. Putting us in the G Pig realm.

You are talking about medical marketing, not science. You may even be talking about the practice of medicine with health as a commodity, but you are still not talking about *science*. Science and technology are not the same things. What you are describing is pharmaceuticals developing a drug for illness A, determining that the drug will actually help people with symptom B even though it is not connected to illness A, and since people expressing symptom B greatly outnumber those with illness A, marketing to those with symptom B (see Viagra, for a canonical example of this).

However, you are still not talking about *science*, you are talking about *marketing*.

How are human beings a guinea pig in, for instance, searching for gravitons (the particle that is hypothesized to carry the force of gravity)?

Cheers
Aj

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

Secular religion is a term used to describe ideas, theories or philosophies which involve no spiritual component yet possess qualities similar to those of a religion. Such qualities include such things as dogma, a system of indoctrination, the prescription of an absolute code of conduct, an ideologically tailored creation story and end-times narrative, designated enemies, and unquestioning devotion to a higher authority. The secular religion operates in a secular society by filling a role which would be satisfied by a church or another religious authority.

Does this help? I was trying to point out that science has a way of not being connected to any specific thing yet has many ideas that are adopted by followers. IE: Believing a pill will cure an ill without really any specific determination that you have the illness. Putting us in the G Pig realm.

Actually it does not help based what you said after the definition. I'm with Aj in that I would love for you to clarify this more. I'm not sure talking about western medicine is a useful comparision.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

I have always thought of science as one big experiment with we humans being the G Pigs. When compared to secular religion IMO there is not much difference between the two.

Go ask Alice!

Hmmm...if you don't mind my asking a couple of questions because I'm a bit mystified by both of your statements.

How are human beings the guinea pigs in, say, high-energy particle physics? Or, for that matter, materials science or nanotechnology?

Also, what do you mean by "secular religion". By definition, unless you are using it in a ironic or cynical manner, religions are not secular they are sectarian. Also, where in religion do you see ANY process remotely like the following:

1) Find interesting thing about the world.
2) Start asking questions about how that thing works.
3) Form hypothesis to explain how that thing works.
4) Test hypothesis either by experiment or observation.
5) Fully document your findings so that others can repeat the process. Check to see if they came up with the same or, at least, similar answers.
6) If your hypothesis is not in agreement with experiment or observation, or if your results cannot be duplicated adjust hypothesis to see if you can bring it into line with reality. If no, abandon hypothesis and start over again at step 3. Continue repeating until a provisionally satisfactory answer is found.
7) Publish findings.
8) Have others look at your findings and see if they can repeat experiment or observation.
9) Continue iterating through the preceding steps.

I'm sorry but I can think of no religion that even gets in the ballpark of that so if you dont' mind, can you explain how it is that you do not see any significant difference between science and religion? Thank you.

Cheers
Aj

[Okiebug61]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Hmmm...if you don't mind my asking a couple of questions because I'm a bit mystified by both of your statements.

How are human beings the guinea pigs in, say, high-energy particle physics? Or, for that matter, materials science or nanotechnology?

Also, what do you mean by "secular religion". By definition, unless you are using it in a ironic or cynical manner, religions are not secular they are sectarian. Also, where in religion do you see ANY process remotely like the following:

1) Find interesting thing about the world.
2) Start asking questions about how that thing works.
3) Form hypothesis to explain how that thing works.
4) Test hypothesis either by experiment or observation.
5) Fully document your findings so that others can repeat the process. Check to see if they came up with the same or, at least, similar answers.
6) If your hypothesis is not in agreement with experiment or observation, or if your results cannot be duplicated adjust hypothesis to see if you can bring it into line with reality. If no, abandon hypothesis and start over again at step 3. Continue repeating until a provisionally satisfactory answer is found.
7) Publish findings.
8) Have others look at your findings and see if they can repeat experiment or observation.
9) Continue iterating through the preceding steps.

I'm sorry but I can think of no religion that even gets in the ballpark of that so if you dont' mind, can you explain how it is that you do not see any significant difference between science and religion? Thank you.

Cheers
Aj

Hi Dreadgeek,

Your thoughts are cool and I totally respect them. I just have to say that my beliefs are way different than yours. I think we have come to a crossroads that will only stray from the conversation of this post if I continue to answer your questions. I certainly do not want to get in a who's right and wrong about science and religion. Thanks for opening my mind to different thoughts regarding both.

Peace!

[ScandalAndy]

I just want to state that I am thoroughly enjoying the responses and how respectful everyone is being although this has the potential to be an incredibly touchy subject. Thank you all for presenting your points respectfully, and taking the time to process what we each have to say.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

Hi Dreadgeek,

Your thoughts are cool and I totally respect them. I just have to say that my beliefs are way different than yours. I think we have come to a crossroads that will only stray from the conversation of this post if I continue to answer your questions. I certainly do not want to get in a who's right and wrong about science and religion. Thanks for opening my mind to different thoughts regarding both.

Peace!

As you will. I regret that you choose not to expound on your interesting take on this matter. I think it would have been fascinating to get some insight into your take on humans as guinea pigs in physics or, for that matter, any of the historical sciences. Alas, I guess we'll never know.

Cheers
Aj

[Okiebug61]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

As you will. I regret that you choose not to expound on your interesting take on this matter. I think it would have been fascinating to get some insight into your take on humans as guinea pigs in physics or, for that matter, any of the historical sciences. Alas, I guess we'll never know.

Cheers
Aj

I am just too much of a free thinking hippy to even try to engage my brain in this type of discussion. You are a very intelligent and well spoken person and I think that's cool. Me I'm thinking about retirement and how I can make that happen 17 years early. :-)

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

I am just too much of a free thinking hippy to even try to engage my brain in this type of discussion. You are a very intelligent and well spoken person and I think that's cool. Me I'm thinking about retirement and how I can make that happen 17 years early. :-)

Okie please........I have no idea what a 'free thinking hippy' looks like or thinks. No one is asking you to express yourself in Aj's or my terms. We are asking you for clarification of what you said.

As to retirement......it is ever on my mind.....I face the 62 or 65 question in 3 years, not 17 years. However there are many things ever on my mind. I multi-task every day.

Frankly I think you are very capable of multi-tasking. I wish you would. I want to understand what you are saying. I don't at this point.

I spent years in the western medicine clinical trial world as a community representative. I could only represent the community when I understood what they were thinking. I don't understand what you mean by guinea pig. If you really think all western medicine is treating human beings as G-pigs, then I want to understand why you think that. I want to know how much you know about how the FDA and how clinical trial mechanisms work. I want to know your knowledge base and how you arrived at the G-pig conclusion.

And then there are the questions about how you define science and what you mean by saying science makes people G pigs.

Help me understand.....or not and I will draw my conclusions based on less that useful information.

[atomiczombie]

Ok I am finally back. As I said previously, I did some work on this back in the 90s during my college years. In 1997 I wrote a paper for a course on Ludvig Wittgenstein that speaks to the ideas brought up in this thread. I am going to copy it here in 2 parts because it is too long to fit in one post! lol

Religious Beliefs and Their Justification:
A Wittgensteinian Approach

It was not too long ago that I was talking with someone about my belief in God, and she said to me, “I just can’t believe that God exists––it just doesn’t seem probable.” This remark is representative of a certain kind of attitude among those who are ‘educated’ and feel they are too smart to fall into superstitious beliefs such as belief in the Christian God. It is framed in such a way as to suggest that the belief in God is based on evidence, and inadequate evidence at that. Degrees of probability are based on the amount of and/or quality of evidence.

To understand how Christian faith might be related to evidence and degrees of probability, it will be helpful to look at a specific claim in the New Testament of the Bible. St. Paul writes:

Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2) For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3) For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4) so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Are the claims that Paul makes in Romans 8 believed on the basis of inadequate evidence? Are these claims subject to degrees of probability? Is every believer someone who simply has not examined the evidence carefully enough and attributes more credibility to it than is warranted? If that is so, then Paul is really saying, “There is now, probably, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. All things considered, it is highly likely, that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. It is Jesus who, all the relevant data indicates, died, yes, was almost unquestionably raised and who we have the supporting evidence to assert with a high degree of probability indeed intercedes for us.”

It seems inappropriate to interpret Paul in this way. It is, of course, not the way Christians interpret Paul’s Epistles. It does not make any sense to attach degrees of probability to the claims that Paul is making, but must that mean that there is no such thing as “giving reasons” for these claims? Certainly not. What it does mean is that evidence and degrees of probability cannot be reasons why someone holds religious beliefs because those kinds of reasons have no relevance in the context in which religious beliefs arise.

This brings us to the question of what would qualify as reasons in a religious context. But before this question can be answered, we must deal with the larger question of how contexts influence the relevance of reasons. Some concepts from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein will be helpful in understanding how this kind of influence works.

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein pointed out the fact that language seems to be connected with the way we live and there is a certain constancy in the use of language among speakers which is connected with the context in which it is used. Constancy in the use of language suggests that there are implicit rules governing how language can be used if it is to be meaningful, just as there are rules which govern how a game can be played. This observation is what led Wittgenstein to describe the language that is tied up with the various activities of our lives, “language games.”

A language game is an activity where words and actions are interwoven according to certain implicit rules. Each language game is imbedded in and tied up with what Wittgenstein called a “form of life.” A form of life is a set of conventional activities that seem to go together. For example, reporting the news, giving a lecture, greeting a friend, telling a joke, making a confession, performing scientific research, being interviewed for a job, etc., are all examples of forms of life. The language people use in connection with and as a part of these and other such activities is the language game. Language games are part of life insofar as they are inextricably linked with the way we live. Wittgenstein introduced the concepts of language games and forms of life to help make clear how language works in connection with our lives.

Wittgenstein also said that the meaning of our language is connected with the context in which it is used. For example, generally speaking, if it is said that performing a certain act is “good,” it could also be said that it is an act that “should” or “ought” to be done. These concepts are loosely connected in what might be called the domain of moral concepts or discourse. Simply because the meaning of these words, when used in certain circumstances, has a moral sense does not mean that all other uses are derivations or corruptions. One could say, “A good way to avoid a sunburn is to wear sunscreen.” This use of the word “good” is perfectly meaningful, but not from a moral perspective because the word is not being used in a moral way. It might be called an “instrumental” or “prudential” use of the word “good.” In contrast, in a sentence such as, “It is good to help a neighbor in distress,” the word “good” does function in a moral way. The context in which it is used determines whether “good” is meant in the moral sense or in some other way.

We ask “What does ‘I am frightened’ really mean, what am I referring to when I say it?” And of course we find no answer, or one that is inadequate.
The question is: “In what sort of context does it occur?”


Here Wittgenstein is directing us to look for the meaning of a word or phrase in the context in which it is used. This understanding of meaning leaves open the possibility that the same words and phrases can have very different meanings depending on the context. The meaning of all our words and phrases is inextricably linked with the context in which they are used. “It is good to help a neighbor in distress.” If someone says this while having a discussion about whether to stop and assist an elderly person who has fallen in the street, then non-prudential moral reasons will be required if further support is needed, such as, “It wouldn’t be right to just walk on by. What if that were one of our grandparents?” Furthermore, if the comment about helping a neighbor is made in the context of a discussion about how to deal with depression during the holidays, then non-moral prudential reasons are what is called for, such as, “Helping others with their problems is a useful way to forget your own.”

What counts as a good reason for believing an assertion depends upon the meaning of that assertion, and the meaning depends upon the context in which it is made. This is what Wittgenstein was talking about when he said:

All testing, all confirmation [i.e., reason-giving] and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.

What Wittgenstein means here is that if one is looking for a context-free justification for, say, moral or religious actions and beliefs, such a search will be in vain. The meaning of a claim does not stand alone. It is connected with a ruled activity which is based on a certain constancy in language and practice (or as Wittgenstein put it, a system)––which is to say that it is rooted in the context of a form of life and the language game that goes with it. It is the context, with its implicit rules, which determines what will count as support for a claim.

The reason St. Paul gave for his claim, in Romans 8:1, that, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is in the next verse: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus had set you free from the law of sin and death.” Paul went further in his explanation in verses three and four. Here it can be seen that these assertions are part of a whole string of assertions that are related to each other logically and which Paul assumes his readers understand, such as the justice of God and its relation to human sin, what constitutes sin and its role in human nature, etc. This string of assertions which are logically related are what can be described as a religious system of reasoning, or a religious language game.

It may sound as if Paul’s claims in Romans 8 are circular since it is religious reasons which he gives in support of them. But religious claims which are supported by religious reasons are no more circular than are scientific claims which are grounded in scientific reasons. For example, it does not make sense to say, “Yes, there is a lot of scientific evidence to support the ‘Big Bang’ theory, but aside from that, why should I believe that the universe began with a big bang?”

Even though each reason appears to need support from yet another in Paul’s Epistle, that does not mean that this type of reason-giving is dubious or irrational or circular. For it would only be so if there were no implicit rules in the process of religious reason-giving which distinguish the relevant reasons from the irrelevant ones or make it possible for one reason to be better than another. If there were no such rules, one could make anything a reason for their beliefs. One could legitimately say, for example, “I believe Christ died for our sins because the moon is made of green cheese.” One reason could be just as good as the next––it would not matter. This is not the case for Paul. He would not accept just any reason as a good one for believing that Christ died for our sins.

[Okiebug61]

[QUOTE=Toughy;367171]Okie please........I have no idea what a 'free thinking hippy' looks like or thinks. No one is asking you to express yourself in Aj's or my terms. We are asking you for clarification of what you said.

As to retirement......it is ever on my mind.....I face the 62 or 65 question in 3 years, not 17 years. However there are many things ever on my mind. I multi-task every day.

Frankly I think you are very capable of multi-tasking. I wish you would. I want to understand what you are saying. I don't at this point.

I spent years in the western medicine clinical trial world as a community representative. I could only represent the community when I understood what they were thinking. I don't understand what you mean by guinea pig. If you really think all western medicine is treating human beings as G-pigs, then I want to understand why you think that. I want to know how much you know about how the FDA and how clinical trial mechanisms work. I want to know your knowledge base and how you arrived at the G-pig conclusion.

And then there are the questions about how you define science and what you mean by saying science makes people G pigs.

Help me understand.....or not and I will draw my conclusions based on less that useful information.[/QUOTE

Toughy! I can't get involved in this discussion without becoming very mad about the FDA and their antics. I will say that I do not think "ALL" western medicine is bad and leave it at that.

Peace!