• InputZero@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’ve met scientists who say God exists and the universe is billions of years old. Their perspective is definitely a bit different. They see themselves as discoverers of God’s work but their academic work was just as valid as their atheist colleagues. Most often they were the first to criticize their church and continued to believe. Blew my mind.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Their academic work is only valid if it doesn’t incorporate their religion. Because faith has no value in science.

    • sfu@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Yeah, there are also Christian scientists who do lots of research and studies and come to the conclusion that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Because they challenge modern science with valid questions that get ignored, they are considered quacks. Like why you can listen to 20 different scientists who are all respected in the field, and get 20 vastly different answers on how old the earth is. You don’t come up with 20 different answers (as though they are truth) by using the scientific method. Which would have to mean at least 19 of them are only guessing.

      lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?

      Only thing I’d say about the christian scientists who say the earth is billions of years old, is that they’d have to deny the scriptures of their faith in order to believe that. Seems like an odd thing to do. Either they really believe it and not what their faith (religion) teaches, or they just want acceptance from non Christians.

      I guess in the end, if you are on the right side of the image, (in the religious or science realm), maybe you should consider the other sides arguments. Maybe its just that they actually figured out the answer and have no need to continue searching. Maybe they don’t have the answer, maybe they do.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        2 days ago

        We pretty confident in the age of the Earth and have been pretty confident in its age for quite some time if you asked 20 scientists they will all give you pretty much the same answer. I don’t know where you’re getting this belief that the age of the Earth is in debate.

        • sfu@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          I like nature, history, discovery shows and documentaries. But they are always giving different ages of the earth, (ages of various plants, animals, events, etc.) Like, vastly different. So no, there is no overwhelming agreement, other than they may all say a long time ago.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            1 day ago

            I cannot speak to the quality of the documentaries you’re watching since you don’t actually list them.

            But I can assure you we are extremely confident we know the age of the Earth. In fact we have known the age of the Earth with high confidence longer than we’ve known age of the universe that contains it.

            The ages of various life forms on the earth are much more nebulous but the age of the actual rock that makes the planet up, is known.

            • sfu@lemm.ee
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              1 day ago

              We know the age of the universe? Please, that’s ridiculous. We don’t know, we have done math, and made guesses. If we have an age for it, it’s just a theory.

                • sfu@lemm.ee
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                  14 hours ago

                  Are there any assumptions made, in the determination of the age of the universe? I’m pretty sure there are. If so, then it has not yet been proven and its a theory.

                  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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                    6 hours ago

                    Oh well if you’re “pretty sure” then I won’t argue with you.

                    After all, you have a feeling on the subject. Don’t bother to look it up or anything. Remaining deliberately uninformed is so much more appealing doing a quick Google search.

      • AccountMaker@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?

        That’s not really the take of the modern philosophy of science. All modern schools of thought when it comes to science have the acceptance of falsehoods embedded into their nodels. I’ll give a few examples:

        Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false. Thus, any scientific theory that’s still accepted is regarded as not yet being proven wrong. Science is just a cycle of giving theories, proving them wrong, giving new ones to account for the problem of the old one and so on, ever getting closer to the truth, but never arriving.

        Thomas Kuhn wrote about scientific paradigms, which are models of the field in question that every scientist uses (for example Aristotelian motion, which was surpassed by Newtonian mechanics, which were surpassed by Einstein’s relativity). During the period of “normal science”, scientists are using their established methods until they end up with too many problems they cannot resolve, at which point it is accepted that the paradigm cannot hold up, and a scientific revolution needs to bring forth a new paradigm, that is incomparable with the old one. Some knowledge is lost in this process, but we move on until the next crisis.

        Paul Feyerabend wrote about countet-induction, which prevents science becoming a dogma. An example he gives is Copernicus going completely against the science of his time with his heliocentric system. The Ptolemaic system was as cutting edge science back then as quantum mechanics is today.

        All in all, findings being continuously disproven and replaced by new ones is not bad science, it is science. Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world, documenting it and saying “that’s it, we solved this problem, we’re done” is not something modern science event attempts at.

        • sfu@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          *“Achieving actual, “true”, positive knowledge of the world… is not something modern science event attempts at.” * -Well, that there is the problem. And if that’s the case, and modern scientists believe this, then why are they always talking about something as if they know it for a fact?

          “Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false.” -Well, he is wrong, of course you can prove things to be true.

          If you’re science is replaced, then you never proved anything, and should not speak as if you know for sure what you are talking about. But modern scientists talk this way all the time.

      • ulterno@programming.dev
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        2 days ago

        then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?

        That’s the point of science. Humility and requestioning yourself everytime someone gives new input, instead of sticking to some old text that some human wrote and multiple other humans over a long period of time, translated; all using lossy translation techniques.

        This mentality is similar to what you will see from many people in places of power (no matter how small), trying to evade criticism using the same social power that they need to be responsible about. Just that in case of religion, one has found a scapegoat, so unassailable that it can be reused indefinitely.

        You can see, which approach is more desirable by simply considering the following facet of the result that we have when we have a science majority vs a religion majority…

        • In times when religious organisations were in power, those who criticised them were killed and their works destroyed to as much of an extent as possible
        • In times when scientific thought was prevalent (scientific organisations don’t get social power owing to their lack of charisma, which stems from the very basic attribute of the modern philosophy of science - that one can be wrong) the religious organisations criticising science are not destroyed until almost extinction, but are allowed to question all results and have the opportunity to aggregate their views.
          • You will always see some kind of religion vs another
          • You might see “science-ism” vs some other religion
          • You will see political orgs (which represent one of the peaks of social power in the current age) vs some politico-religional orgs trying to destroy and silence the other
          • You will not see science trying to silence a religion
          • You will see businessmen trying to use scientific results as a stepladder to social power. You will also see them fail in the long term, simply due to the nature of science.
        • sfu@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          Well, religion is based on faith and history (but at a certain point falls back on faith since you aren’t there in the past), and science should be based on empirical evidence. So both realms can’t operate exactly the same, although they can cross over.

          Many people do research on many faiths, and their research convinces them that a particular one is correct. They can live the rest of their life believing that particular faith is correct, and stick with it, even if they are open to being proven wrong.

          And with science, if you actually prove something true, you do not have to act as though you have not. Now, if you only have a theory, then yes, you should be questioning it until it can be proven. I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.

          • ulterno@programming.dev
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            2 days ago

            I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.

            Yeah, that’s one of the pretty big problems I see happening in the current scenario.
            People becoming way more hand-wavy about having been proven wrong, which sometimes seems (we can’t know whether it actually is) outright disingenuous.

            The religion related scenario I painted was probably possible due to how long it lasted. Maybe we will have to wait for this one to last long enough to know whether what it yields is as undesirable or more.
            For now, at least I don’t see it going in the same direction as the religion power, simply because it’s not the science people that are holding power, but other politics oriented ones. So if it were to go in an undesirable direction in the far future, it would have to be in some other direction.

            • sfu@lemm.ee
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              1 day ago

              Yeah, I think both religion and science have taken a back seat to just plain ol’ greed and power.

              • ulterno@programming.dev
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                23 hours ago

                The science guys will always do science.
                Even if the patronages stop.
                Even if other’s start killing them for it.
                Even if the whole society calls them a heretic.
                The quest for truth defines them.


                Just don’t mistake them for science bros