My Apologies To Science

Dear Science, those who support you and those who wish for you to flourish,

I am sorry. I was wrong to make threads attacking your credibility without properly understanding your nature first. This was an arrogant move on my behalf and at the time I really did not think I was harming your cause. Despite the fact I am making a mountain out of a molehill by even making this thread (I have probably made about 3-5 threads critical of science out of over 200 non-science threads), the reason I am still doing so is because now I better understand why you are sensitive to uninformed criticism directed at you.

At the present moment of time, science itself is the most reasonable, incorruptible and objective method we have at our disposal. It might not be perfect, it might not have every answer to all our questions, but it is the most reliable method available to us and we should prioritise it over non-scientific approaches by default.

Yours sincerely,
Dark Ghost.

Edit: I messed up and had to edit. I originally referred to "science" as a minority when I was actually meaning to reference atheism at the time. Since this thread does not have to do with atheism, I am not sure why I was referencing it. I guess I owe readers that saw the original reply an apology too.

Science a minority being ridiculed? When the 3 billion christians and muslims move out of cities and go live into the woods naked, we can say science is at minority until then it is glorified by all religions and non religious people.

a reply to: Golantrevize

I apologise for any confusion, please see my edit in the opening post at the bottom.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
..Carl Sagan

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Btw, what made you change your mind

a reply to: Dark Ghost

I notice you write a lot in the Philosophy forums, don't apologize to Science...it has fed well at the public trough...only to see it's great ideas patented to ruthless corporations (Monsanto). Science has a bottomless legal fund and time to wipe out detractor's.

incorruptible

I think you're being funny here

a reply to: Dark Ghost

The problem is all "good" science is subjective. In my opinion, all objectivity is subjectively determined.

The problem with superstition is people will attribute all sorts of meanings to their experiences. I think most people are just not willing to face the fact that nature is amazingly consistently in repeating the patterns identified by the laws of physics. Many people just cannot accept living in world where God is not actively participating. But the facts seem to indicate the laws of physics are absolute.

I think all religion has left at this point is a deist point of view or a pantheistic point of view. A judgmental anthropomorphic god doesn't seem to exist based on the amounts of unnecessary evil in the world.

"Pantheism is the belief that all reality is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god."

As great as science is in identifying how nature behaves, science in itself does not really answer the four great existential questions that religion is supposed to answer:

1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?
3. What does it all mean?
4. What will happen to me after I die?

The best answers science can give to those four questions usually ring empty and hollow. Most people are looking to have a little bit more meaning in their lives.

I agree with you though that although science has problems it's still a really great tool for helping and hurting people.

When you talk about criticisms of science or religion, there are two arguments I really do not like. First, is the idea that atheists deny the existence of God. What's irritating about this is the theists paint the atheists as being anit-God. When in actuality, most atheists are not anti-God. Most atheists are indifferent to the idea of God and see God as unnecessary.

The other argument I can't stand is when people claim religion is the cause for war, murders, and unnecessary evils in the world. My problem with this way of thinking is if religion did not exist at all, there would still be just as many wars, murders, and acts of unnecessary evil in the world. Religion by itself did not create human nature. Human nature existed before religion had been created.

a reply to: Golantrevize

I have been physically unwell over the last 1.5 weeks and have spent a large deal of time watching YouTube videos on topics such as science, religion, politics and, to give myself a break, some comedy. I wound up watching a video of Sam Harris speaking about a non-science related video and was really engaged by his style. He seems to be very proficient in his technical knowledge of various religious traditions, his understanding of various scientific fields, his ability to explain things clearly (although he does use complex vocabulary at times) all while maintaining a calm, composed and eloquent manner. It is rare that I have seen somebody so seemingly emotionally detached from the topics of religion and science and still be able to make strong, persuasive arguments that are extremely difficult to counter without resorting to emotions.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

You should take a look at the works of Joseph Campbell. He spent his whole life finding what were the common threads in all religions:

www.youtube.com...

This is ATS. If you have 8 hours to kill these videos are great conspiracy stuff:

www.youtube.com...

and

www.youtube.com...

and

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

You know what the problem is? It isn't science itself, the key problem is the actual mixing of science with politics in a manner where profit takes precedence over science. I will not claim that science itself is 100% incorruptible, but I will say if you do not mix science with another field that involves material gain for the scientist, then I am confident 99.99% of the time it is itself incorruptible.

Yes, I cannot express in words how much I value the topic of Philosophy. It has transformed my way of thinking in such positive ways that my level of empathy as a human being has risen even greater than the above average amount I was told I possessed even before I began properly studying it.

Your last line made me laugh.

Good on you Dark Ghost!

I remember having a similar "eureka!" moment at one point in my life. It's amazing how just one or two pieces of new information can bring so much clarity to this confusing existence.

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

You know what the problem is? It isn't science itself, the key problem is the actual mixing of science with politics in a manner where profit takes precedence over science.

I agree. The people deciding which scientific papers get published as "good" science often show favoritism that is purely subjective and political.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Science has no heart or soul, so don't accept it trying to tell you otherwise. All you need to do is watch it in action.

If science had a heart or soul, it would adopt the short motto of the physician, "Do no harm" and run with its work in the other direction (toward doing good).

The funny thing of it is it should be crystal clear for science to look at itself and say is this good or bad for my people. But the real fly in this pile of # that still does not really want other life to be found in the universe is that it is controlled by the minds of men (and women) and many of them not quite right in the head in a pathological sort of way.

a reply to: Aliensun

?????Do you have any idea of the massive projects currently in space and on earth searching for life in the universe?????

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Well said...and i'm on your same wavelength

Hold my beer.
I'm about to do some science.

a reply to: Golantrevize

As an abductee, I definitely do. But I'm old, having been around before the UFOs starting coming after we split the atom, and back when science itself believed humans were the only intelligent life in the universe. So I'm fully aware of how that whole question of "life out there" has been ignored for all of that time. Point of fact: who in government or science takes the reports of UFOs as credible evidence of visiting aliens? (Of course, they know the truth but lie to us. Is that good or bad science or done for convenience of keeping the populace under control and the ETs at bay? So the "do no harm" motto really gets into the meat of ethics and the twisting of the same.)

Actually, all of that work going on that you mentioned is nothing but an effort to get the public and other aspects of science up to speed and thinking, accepting, the idea of alien life as amply documented by UFO activities for over half a century. Covering their behinds, it is.

a reply to: Aliensun

Have you ever shared your abduction in details here on ATS ? Im quite curious, if it is something you rather not talk about I understand.

a reply to: Aliensun

Aliensun...

For someone who claims to have been abducted, you sure have not gone to any great lengths to understand the sciences very well, have you? You used the phrase...

...back when science itself believed humans were the only intelligent life in the universe.

...which is something you could ONLY ever say, if you had literally no idea what science is about. First of all, science is a methodology, a way of thinking. It does not come to conclusions. That is the job of those who USE science. It is a tool, not an intelligence in and of itself. It cannot come to conclusions, reach decisions, have ideas or come up with new ways to do things. That is the job of the person using it, the person operating a scientific mind. It is NOTHING to do with science itself, because science has no animus of its own.

Also, the question of "life out there" has not been ignored, simply placed at the back of the queue, and do you know why? It is not that people do not care, or that SCIENTISTS (not science itself, because as previously stated, it has no opinion of its own, any more than a hammer chooses the nail it is directed toward) believed that searching for other life was a waste of time. It has been placed at the back of the queue for a while, because up until very recently, the technology to make effective observations of planets outside our solar system, which would be of a resolution high enough, a detail level deep enough, to make identification of life bearing planets possible, DID NOT DAMNED WELL EXIST! The evolution of telescopy of various kinds, both optical and otherwise, needed to move on a damned sight further than it had during the beginning of the space race, hell, further than it had by the end of the 90's, in order to make even THINKING about deep space observations of use to E.T. hunters a worthwhile prospect.

Now, of course, we have the James Webb Telescope, launching relatively soon, which will increase the depth and the resolution of our observations of deep space, allowing gigantic advancements in the types of data we can glean from images of deep space, including actually observing the contents of atmospheres around planets in enough detail to confirm to a greater level of certainty, the presence of gases and other elements in those atmospheres, which indicate the presence or lack thereof, of something we could recognise as life.

Furthermore, our propulsion technology...

Our ability to make up close examinations of other worlds, is ultimately the only tool which is one hundred percent reliable, when it comes to finding life on other worlds. All the telescopes, probes, signals received by radiotelescopes and the like, really mean and amount to nothing, when compared with actually going and seeing for ourselves, what may be on the surface of a given planet, hidden under its oceans, fossilised within its rocks and mineral strata. ONLY travel amongst the stars, can, in my view, provide us with definitive answers to the sorts of questions we have about those planets, about the depths of space, and about the life which may or may not dwell there. Once again though, we lack the technological capacity to achieve travel to the most interesting locations we have yet discovered in our telescopic scans of the heavens. Hell, we cannot even reach the closest star to our own, leave alone the most interesting star systems that we have observed. We cannot even reach MARS, a planet which is a mere cosmic stones throw away, in a reasonable amount of time, even with our most powerful craft yet built, or for that matter, with the most powerful craft ever conceived using proven technology.

Simply put, we are in no position to start making travel amongst the planets a reality yet, leave alone amongst the stars. When from here to Mars is a two day journey, perhaps we can discuss getting out to the nearest stars. When travel between here and the nearest star to our own takes just a couple of days, perhaps we can start thinking about a journey to the edge of not just the known universe, but the actual universe. Until then, we should not be bemoaning the lack of progress, but supporting current efforts, so that the backing is there when things DO move on to where we would like them to be.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Science is just our best guess based on the factual evidence we have available at the time.

That being said its humanity best option for attempting to understand the universe and reality we experience.