This report at LSJ.com shows how, based on a sociology study on the faith of scientists. 1/3 reported that "they did not believe in God," but the papers reported that "2/3 DO believe in God" – which turns out to be false if you look more closely at the data – at best, only 1/3 believe in God if you examine the data closely.
This is why I almost never believe the MSM on scientific findings, because partisan politics always spins scientific reports. And the MSM is not the primary report, it is someone else’s interpretation. I mean, even the primary article may contain falsified data, as my previous post, Why I Trust Science in Principle, But not in Practice, discussed.
Excellent! Stick your head in the sand when confronted with a fact you don't like, Mohammed!
Louis must have seen that South Park…
Well, attacking the faith of the faithful always angers them.
Oh, boo-hoo! What are you gonna do, fly some airplays into some buildings?
I'm talking about how YOU react wnen YOUR faith in science is challenged – you gat all wacky and make intelligent replies like stuff about sticking one's head in the sand.
There are good reasons not to trust everything that comes out of the back end of Science magazine. The "relibility" of science, despite it's excellent track record, is now something to seriously question, and I keep providing more evidence of the corruption of our current scientific results machine, and the MSM political spin on scientific papers.
YOu paint those who have lost unswerving faith in sc9ience as anti-science religionists, but that's just a low-brow knee-jerk charicature, not real discussion of the issue.
Quote: "The "relibility" of science, despite it's excellent track record, is now something to seriously question…"
What excellent track record? Big Science has a horrible track record starting with Galileo. The more you examine the track record of Big Science the worse it gets. Its not "sciences" fault but perpetual deception and corruption is the nature of any human institution.
I suppose Louis will now tell us that scientist aren't humans and don't make cascading mistakes in proceedure and analysis.
My favorite Biology teacher who was an actual scientist
unlike most biology teachers once paraphased a certain Asian philoshoper saying "90% of what we (scientist) is untrue but we say it so that you will understand the 10% which is true." I would say its more like 9.999999999% untrue and 0.0000000001% true.
Yes, I am a fundamentalist cynic and member of the first church of cynicism.
"What excellent track record? Big Science has a horrible track record starting with Galileo." -Septeus7
So two bodies of mass don't fall at and equal rate in a vacuum?
So moons don't orbit Jupiter?
Wow, dat Galileo shure a twicky un. I tink I taw he on Tee Vee once.
Whatever mistakes or fraud science has endured are child's play compared with the record of religion. I don't have FAITH in science because "faith" is belief without evidence. At least science takes as its starting point the need for evidence: objective observation, formulation of hypotheses based on that observation, rigorous testing of those hypotheses, and logical thought to form conclusions and theories based on this process (when the whole process circles back). What does religion propose? Belief in unsupported or anecdotal claims from people who could be mistaken for (or actually are) schizophrenics, and blind faith in ancient texts which are so full of such wild claims as to be laughable. Yes, religion CAN contain some wisdom, but do does philosophy, art, literature, dance, history, anthropology, psychology, etc., and without the mystical baggage and fundamentalist authoritarianism it most usually displays. Your emotional tirade notwithstanding, seeker, I'll stand by my position.
I don't have FAITH in science because "faith" is belief without evidence.
I think that we all exercise faith in our technologies, and our scientits every day. We trust that the scientific method keeps us safe. But the problem is, the scientific method has been compromised by the pressures to publish, and the other market and ideological forces of our day. As the increasing reports show, science has in a lot of ways been corrupted in our day.
I mean, ever heard of Vioxx? Just one example.
I don't think of my post as an emotional tirade, but as an impassioned presentation of evidence, showing why unquestioning faith in science is not a smart game to play. I certainly acknowledge the great benefits science has and does bring to humanity, but in our current day, I'd also say that there are siginificant corrupting forces, that's all.
I think one of those corrupting forces is the introduction of Christianity in a field that should be empirical. Example, Intelligent design.
And I previously presented an article about how evolutionary thinking may be hindering science.
Science should be empirical. However, foundational world views and their associated assumptions should not be considered as unwavering fact. But evolutionists can't separate their fact from their worldviews, so they call them all fact. That's the beef here.
ID is asking a perfectly logical question, but we are not willing to address it because we don't like the answer. Sure, we want to stick to naturalistic answers, but we must observe what is there, not what we wish was there.
"Science should be empirical. However, foundational world views and their associated assumptions should not be considered as unwavering fact. But evolutionists can't separate their fact from their worldviews, so they call them all fact. That's the beef here."
Evolution is not considered "unwavering fact." If another scientific theory comes along which better explains species, so be it. We extablished before that ID is not true empirical science because it assumes a creator. There is nothing empirical about a creator, it's all metaphysical. Sure, ID is asking a logical question, but don't pass it off as a scientific question. It's a philisophical/metaphysical question, not empirical.
Sure, ID is asking a logical question, but don't pass it off as a scientific question. It's a philisophical/metaphysical question, not empirical.
Actually, it is both. One possible practical (read "scientific") application of ID theory is, if someone introduced an engineered bio-organism into the environment, how would we recognize that it was engineered and not naturally occuring?
I am not a huge ID supporter, though, and agree that it leans towards a God in the gaps type of thing – although ID supporters deny such.
I think biblical creationism is much more robust as a theory with scientific implications for history and research.
"Actually, it is both. One possible practical (read "scientific") application of ID theory is, if someone introduced an engineered bio-organism into the environment, how would we recognize that it was engineered and not naturally occuring?"
How? :) Because life can be patented now, which I think is sad. Corporations own the rights to any life they bio-engineer in the lab. To answer your question, you would have to call the patent office to tell :)
Seriously though, as you mentioned, we are speaking of divine intervention when we speak about ID, not man creating life. It's like asking in a fatal car accident, how did this person die? Did another person kill him when they swerved into his lane or was it the will of God? You can prove man's involvent scientifically, not God's. That's like ID.
This is not about patents, but about recognizing engineered organisms, like pathogens or accidental release of harmful bio products by unscrupulous industry?
The question is, how would you recognize something that is not an "accident of nature"?
Right now, evolution pretends to be reponsible for all life that we see.
Again, the question here, though, is not about ID. It's about the believability of modern science and the gullibility of the public.
The patents was my little joke. I would say that in order to recognize a bio-engineered organism from something naturally occuring you would have to ask a geneticist, "Is there is a way to tell if an organism has been altered or cloned." Man has not created life, just altered and cloned the original forms. I would think there would be tell tale indications that genetic alteration took place in such organisms. The answer may be as simple as count the number of genes. Take a genetically altered dog for example; if it has more or less or different genes than natural dogs it means it's bio-engineered. This may be too simplistic though. I am not a geneticist so honestly, I'm not qualified to answer this question. Here is a good site that may have the answer though :) You should ask this question there for a good answer. http://www.hhmi.org/cgi-bin/askascientist/search….
Joke: Also, man made breeds like poodles can't survive without man's help. Had evolution followed its natural course the poodle abomination would never exist. Remember that Far Side cartoon, poodles of the Serengeti?
There are ways to prove man's intervention in evolution but not divine intervention.
Seeker, I just realized that you don't want to ask the scientists your question because you don't trust what their answer will be. So, how will you you learn the answer to,
"if someone introduced an engineered bio-organism into the environment, how would we recognize that it was engineered and not naturally occuring?"
I would think that is a question for someone who is an authority in the field. If you can't ask these questions from the people who are experts, how will you ever learn the truth? Open your thinking up a bit and ask them and then judge for yourself if what they say has merit. Otherwise, you will remain uneducated about this question. I can ask for you if you like :) I am curious myself.
Well, I do have a B.S. in biochemistry, and studied the biochemistry of genetics. But I don't know the answer to that question either. As I said, I think ID is interesting, but may be weak.
However, creation science is not weak, nor is it unscientific (though it can be depending on how you approach it).
But again, the essence of this post is about the believability, and relative fallibility of modern science, and how despite the growing evidence that science is more fallible than we thought, many people put unwavering faith in it, and even more, they confuse evolutionary assumptions and faith with fact, and in so doing, adopt what amounts to a world view that is held by many scientists, but not corroborated by science itself. Scary. Group think. A hegemony of thought, for sure.
I read the LSJ article. I don't see the connection between science and belief in God in the article. Einstein believed in a God, so what? They also had a little poll about scientists being less likely to believe in God. So? Make that a poll of scientists in Japan and I bet the numbers would be even lower. No surprise. I don't get the point of this article. It seems to me like they are trying to say something but not doing a good job of it. Maybe lots of scientists realize that they can't accept the bible literally, if at all if the are not christians, because so many of the events in the bible don't make any sense. The high percentage of Americans who take the bible literally is kind of sad because it shows they are not very well educated. If we can get these people to ask questions and think for themeselves, just not take things on faith, maybe we could catch up with other industrialized countries in terms of education.
Seeker,
We were talking about ID and you asked this question…
If someone introduced an engineered bio-organism into the environment, how would scientists recognize that it was engineered and not naturally occuring?
I submitted this to Howard Hughes Medical Institutešs Ask a Scientist website on your behalf. Here is their response.
This depends upon what was actually engineered but in most cases the answer is probably yes. If an insect gene is engineered into a plant gene for example, the changes in the plant genome can be detected quite easily because the wild species will not contain the insect gene. If an ‘improved’ plant gene was introduced into a crop this could also be detected but this would need more careful and elaborate analysis to detect the more subtle changes between these genes in the wild versus the engineered species. We do not have the skills to engineer entirely new species and since evolution occurs over relatively long periods, should it ever become possible to genetically engineer some kind of new species, it would be obvious that it was not natural.
Genetic engineering could perhaps go undetected if you were accelerating a natural phenomenon. For example, and hypothetically, it is possible to engineer antibiotic resistance into a bacteria. This is mimicking an event that occurs naturally so it might be difficult to show the difference between a GE versus wild type transfer.
We appreciate your interest in Ask a Scientist.
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In short, the question Intelligent Design asks is metaphysical not scientific. It is possible to prove scientifically that man is involved in evolution but a divine presence can not be proven or disproven scientifically. Conclusion: Intelligent Design is not science.
Well, I hardly think that brief answer covers it. It's a good start to a much more complex issue.
But what he is saying is that if they don't know an obvious mechanism, then it must be engineered? What if they found a vector that *did* insert insect genes into plants later? Would they then say "oops, maybe it wasn't engineered?" They are making an argument from lack of evidence. Just because we can't explain how it happens doesn't mean it was manufactured – I mean, that's what they accuse ID of saying!
But thanks for getting that answer. In the coming weeks, I'll run it by Michael Behe or Wm Dembski or the CSC and see how they respond.