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I've watched those movies. How are they about the 'religion of science'?
Strange.. you didn't notice the resistance Eddington had to test Einstein's theory? and disprove newtonian psychics? (you could all this.. resistance of change of religion)
And you didn't notice in the Darwin movie.. how other scientists pressured the hell out of Darwin to "get it done" take down the church?
Of course it does.. what is "the big bang" but a supernatural event? explained with a bunch of math and observations of a past that doesn't exist.
It is a hypothesis about a past that might have existed that appears to at least not be contradicted by math. I don't believe science actually claims any more than that. I doubt that will ever change because when you get beyond the big bang you are trying to guess what is outside of our closed system of reality. Indeed, time as we know it may well not extend beyond the big bang and so there is conceivably nothing to even talk about there in terms of "before" for all we know. Who is to say that the universe doesn't pulse in and out of a singularity every X billions or trillions of years. Who is to say that time runs in the same direction at the same rate, or even exists, no matter where in that process you are? All bets are off when it comes to stepping outside the framework of reality that we know and have the perceptual and intellectual equipment to work within. I think it unlikely that there is anything but natural processes all along the way, but my guess is that at the extremes near the big bang, the definition of natural might seem to us pretty unnatural.
Technically science has nothing to say about this area because we don't really have empirical data to work with yet -- and may never. Sometimes science does itself a disservice by speculating too much about such matters because it is seized upon in ways like what you are. Still, if we don't speculate we don't have any hope of coming up with workable hypotheses and hopefully some eventual knowledge, either.
Ultimately what we're talking about here is one of the few remaining gaps in which gods can still hide from us and tantalize us. I for one don't believe we will ever close every one of them. But the fact that we ultimately didn't find god or even mystery in thunder and lightning, "spontaneous generation" or a zillion other things, suggests strongly that we won't find such things in the other gaps, either.
Strange.. you didn't notice the resistance Eddington had to test Einstein's theory? and disprove newtonian psychics? (you could all this.. resistance of change of religion)
And you didn't notice in the Darwin movie.. how other scientists pressured the hell out of Darwin to "get it done" take down the church?
Yes, I did. It was Eddington's Quaker religious beliefs he had to struggle with when he first realised that Einstein's Theory would replace Newton's (which was approved by the church). Darwin had to struggle with his religious beliefs too- as well as his wife's - when all his observations and all the evidence was pointing away from the currently held Creationist view. In the movie, it was only really Huxley that wanted Darwin to finish his book to 'take down the church'. The church certainly had a stranglehold on science at that time and was holding back scientific research, so it wasn't surprising some scientists felt like that.
But how are the movies about the 'religion' of science? They were more about the struggle of scientists against the stranglehold of the prevailing religious dogma at the time.
It is a hypothesis about a past that might have existed that appears to at least not be contradicted by math. I don't believe science actually claims any more than that.
The science religion does
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ceist
Yes, I did. It was Eddington's Quaker religious beliefs he had to struggle with when he first realised that Einstein's Theory would replace Newton's (which was approved by the church). Darwin had to struggle with his religious beliefs too- as well as his wife's - when all his observations and all the evidence was pointing away from the currently held Creationist view. In the movie, it was only really Huxley that wanted Darwin to finish his book to 'take down the church'. The church certainly had a stranglehold on science at that time and was holding back scientific research, so it wasn't surprising some scientists felt like that.
But how are the movies about the 'religion' of science? They were more about the struggle of scientists against the stranglehold of the prevailing religious dogma at the time.
The thing your missing most about why I'm saying 'science is religious'
Was about how HARD it was to prove Einstein's theory.. my way of seeing the movie and the energy of the time is.. THEY didn't really want to look!!! they didn't want to be wrong..
To think that scientists are some kind of truth seekers.. and willing to explore every theory or idea to it's fullest.. that seems to me to be a oxymoron..
It is as much as a religious claim as anything else.. I'm gonna say jesus was born from a virgin.. now if I can get you scientists *cough* clergy to agree with me.. we can make this happen
(yeshua btw.. wasn't born from a virgin wasn't a carpenter either.. )
To think that scientists are some kind of truth seekers.. and willing to explore every theory or idea to it's fullest.. that seems to me to be a oxymoron..
Scientists are human and get invested in their ideas and interests just like anyone else. That is why the scientific method is what it is -- reproducibility, peer review and the like are designed specifically to counter such biases and vested interests.
Does it work perfectly? No. It has been said that all truths (scientific or otherwise) are first ridiculed, then grudgingly accepted, then considered by former opponents as if they had been self-evident all along. I have given elsewhere in this space the example of the discovery that a bacteria was responsible for stomach ulcers rather than "stress". The guy who discovered it finally in exasperation swallowed a dose of the bacteria and showed before and after pictures of the ulcers he developed. He was definitely an object of scorn for some years, until conventional wisdom was overturned by the fact that his results were reproduced over and over and his discovery survived peer review.
In point of fact, I don't consider that story to reflect so much scientific bias as it reflects scientific skepticism, which is science's default position. The very fact that he had to jump through so many hoops may be a vice from the perspective of people needing a cure, but it's a virtue in terms of keeping crackpots and other riff-raff out of the conversation, too.
Now if ID were a valid (which is to say, testable) scientific hypothesis right out the chute, it might be that the qualified scientists supporting ID (are there actually any? Let's just assume there are) would have to do something attention-getting like our hapless discoverer of Heliobacter Pylori mentioned above, to get the ball rolling. They might have to publish again and again. They might have to be patient. But in the end, if they actually have a case, the system will be forced to affirm it. I don't see that they have gotten to square one and the simpler explanation than your conspiracy theories, is that they don't have a case that will get them there.
Show us the actual scientists who have published actual papers about actual research on ID for actual peer review. You should have several to cite; after all this is of keen interest to Christendom.
To think that scientists are some kind of truth seekers.. and willing to explore every theory or idea to it's fullest.. that seems to me to be a oxymoron.. :smack
There's an old saying in academia: New discoveries are made one funeral at a time.
Academia's major weakness is how politicized it has become. I think more politiking takes place on college campuses than takes place in Washington DC.
Because of this, scientists who make new discoveries that undermine the established positions of older scientists are often ridiculed by the "Old Guard" who simply don't want a lifetime of work invalidated by something new. Imagine if your entire Ph.D. was rendered untrue via some new piece of information? So yeah, scientists working on a new theory have trouble getting it researched because the "Old Guard," who are now sitting in seats of power within academia simply deny research grants to anyone working against the established theories. Well, no research grants essentially means no job ... so most scientists will abandon the new stuff just to keep food on their tables.
BUT ... eventually the "Old Guard" will begin to retire and die off, and once that happens, the new scientists are free to pursue their research with better, more current data without some old graybeard blocking their efforts. Hence the meaning of that expression.
Thos working on the cutting edge often have to wait until members of the "Old Guard" die off before they can really bring their new information to light.
Ergo, it's not really about not wanting to seek the truth. They do. But as with most anyone, academics and scientists will fight to remain relevant in their fields. Since the older scientists control the purse strings, well, sometimes the younger scientists have to pry those strings out of some emeritus's cold, dead fingers.
The thing your missing most about why I'm saying 'science is religious'
Was about how HARD it was to prove Einstein's theory.. my way of seeing the movie and the energy of the time is.. THEY didn't really want to look!!! they didn't want to be wrong..
To think that scientists are some kind of truth seekers.. and willing to explore every theory or idea to it's fullest.. that seems to me to be a oxymoron..
It is as much as a religious claim as anything else.. I'm gonna say jesus was born from a virgin.. now if I can get you scientists *cough* clergy to agree with me.. we can make this happen
(yeshua btw.. wasn't born from a virgin wasn't a carpenter either.. )
I get what you are trying to say, I just don't agree with you calling science a 'religion' or that Darwin, Eddington or Einstein "didn't want to look because they didn't want to be wrong". What you seem to be ignoring is that Darwin lived during times when religion had a stranglehold on everything, including science.
In the movie "Creation", Darwin DID want to look- and he certainly did look. He struggled so long with writing his book because he realised how big an impact his discoveries and Theory of Origin of Species by Natural Selection would have and how he would probably be pilloried by the religious dogmatists of his time (which he was - and still is, in the US). As a loving husband, he was also concerned about the impact on his devoutly religious wife. But he DID write and publish his book... despite the consequences.
Eddington also WANTED to look. He knew there was a problem with Newton's Theory of Gravity and he couldn't leave it alone and NOT search for the answers. He was only held back for awhile by his Quaker religious beliefs and the enormity of replacing Newton's Theory of Gravity (which was approved by the church) with Einstein's Theory of Relativity. As well, he struggled with being a patriotic Englishman investigating the Theory of a German scientist (Einstein) during WWI. But his scientific curiosity and ethics won out... and he 'looked' and was the first to successfully test Einstein's Theory of Relativity. One of the older scientists didn't want to "look" because his dogmatic Christian religious beliefs were stronger than his scientific ethics or curiosity..
So basically, to me, the movies were more about the struggles early scientists like Darwin and Eddington had to go through because of the stranglehold of theistic Religious dogma. Nothing about science itself being a religion.
It was those scientists like Richard Owen who let their religious beliefs override their scientific curiosity and ethics who 'didn't want to look because they might be wrong" - wrong about their religious beliefs.
Porsche? - No designer or creator
Iphone? - No designer or creator
Oil rig? - No designer or creator
If anyone made these statements above, we would look at them like they were crazy.
Yet we have 24 hours in a day, every day. 365 1/4 days per year, every year. 4 seasonal periods per year. The travel of the moon is predictable. The travel of the earth around the sun is predictable. Yet there is no designer or creator? Of course there is a Creator.
One would think a know-it-all creator could have managed to do it without that annoying, leftover 1/4 of a day
How can one look out into infinite space - this huge endless place and imagine that we on this speck of dust with a bit of grey matter contained in our pitiful skulls are intelligent - and the universe is not?
Mainly because we see no evidence of the universe exhibiting traits that we associate with intelligence. There's no planning, forethought, learning, self-awareness, memory or anything else that our brains do.
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now if I can get you scientists *cough* clergy to agree with me.. we can make this happen 
wasn't a carpenter either.. 