Why do unscientific people think they are qualified to attack science? (priest, Islam)

[KCfromNC]

I'm hesitant to post on this thread-from-the-dead, but what the heck.

Take a look at Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is research showing that people who have limited knowledge about a subject also lack the self-awareness to know that they have limited knowledge. "The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality"

So not only is it unsurprising that people with limited background in science would fool themselves into thinking they're skilled in it, the research actually shows that it is likely.

[Eresh]

Originally Posted by NJLoverinNC

If that is the case, then why does The Theory of Evolution begin with The Big Bang Theory which hmm... is the creation of the universe? Science does not have all the answers. That's the exact reason why it is questioned frequently and scientists encourage constant questioning.

Even though I am sick to death of the evolution/creation debates, I just can't let this one slide. Evolution has NOTHING to do with Big Bang. Period.
You are correct that science does not have all the answers. Science is a process of learning about the natural world. Yes, scientists question things (particularly the research of others), and they require MULTIPLE of evidence before accepting something as scientific theory. That is precisely WHY scientific theories, such as evolution, have so much clout within the scientific community.

[NJLoverinNC]

Originally Posted by Eresh

Even though I am sick to death of the evolution/creation debates, I just can't let this one slide. Evolution has NOTHING to do with Big Bang. Period.
You are correct that science does not have all the answers. Science is a process of learning about the natural world. Yes, scientists question things (particularly the research of others), and they require MULTIPLE of evidence before accepting something as scientific theory. That is precisely WHY scientific theories, such as evolution, have so much clout within the scientific community.

Evolution has nothing to do with the Big Bang? Right. The Big Bang Theory supposedly explains how the universe came to be and everything in it including the Earth. Along those lines, had there been no Big Bang, then there would be no Earth in which to study this so-called Theory of Evolution.

If you want to go even further, evolutionists believe that the theory is factual and steeped in science, etc. Well, if they knew the definition of a theory then they would know that "evolution" is indeed not factual.

Here is the full definition of a theory: 1. a. Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, esp. a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena. b. Such knowledge or such a system distinguished from experiment or practice. 2. Abstract reasoning: speculation. 3. An assumption or guess based on limited knowledge or information: hypothesis.

[denverian]

Originally Posted by txguy2009

It gets really old and is actually quite alarming to hear people with no formal education in hard science naively criticize scientific theories. The worst lines are "but evolution requires faith too! It's just all one big leap of faith everything is equal."

The cold irony here though is that Christians are making exactly the same arguments that morally relativistic post-modernists make. The same people they claim to stand against.

Everything is not faith. Science is a rational, logical way of understanding the world **based on observation**. Evolution is NOT just faith because, to put it simply, the theory allows us to make predictions about empirical outcomes. Simply saying "God made everything" does not allow you to make these same empirical predictions. For instance, given genome x in 1,000 members of species y, subject species y to this environmental condition, we can expect a shift in the distribution of genome x.

The key here is that evolutionary theorists are not simply saying "we have a collection of observations and we construct any old ad hoc theory to explain it." If that were how it worked then the Christian critique would be correct.

The mark of true science is constructing a rigorous, mathematical, theory, which agrees with all known observations ***and is able to make accurate future predictions abotu empirical events***.

Why don't anti-evolutionists understand this? It's almost as if they're so out of their intellectual depths they can launch these naive, misleading attacks and well-intentioned but ignorant followers simply swallow it whole. It is exasperating. They will believe anything their uneducated preacher tells them.

It is true that at a base level you must make some unprovable assumptions, even in science. But that is far, far from saying that both science and religion are equal at making falsifiable predictions - science far outstrips religion in this regard.

What's funny is that Christians do not raise the same naive attacks on sciences which don't directly threaten their beliefs, like physics or chemistry (in fact all the christians on here rely on physics to communicate over the internet, and some likely use chemistry via pharmaceutical drugs to stay alive).
Yet when the same rigorous methods produce an outcome that contradicts their belief that all life was created by God they attack it. Very hypocritical.

A final point of contention is the fact that Christians claim that evolution has never been directly observed. This is utterly false.

This is the "new America", where intelligence, education, and knowledge are put down as "elitism". We'll just call it the "Palin Effect" lol!

[agnostic soldier]

Originally Posted by NJLoverinNC

Evolution has nothing to do with the Big Bang? Right. The Big Bang Theory supposedly explains how the universe came to be and everything in it including the Earth. Along those lines, had there been no Big Bang, then there would be no Earth in which to study this so-called Theory of Evolution.

If you want to go even further, evolutionists believe that the theory is factual and steeped in science, etc. Well, if they knew the definition of a theory then they would know that "evolution" is indeed not factual.

Here is the full definition of a theory: 1. a. Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, esp. a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena. b. Such knowledge or such a system distinguished from experiment or practice. 2. Abstract reasoning: speculation. 3. An assumption or guess based on limited knowledge or information: hypothesis.

You know nothing of science. For one, the Big Bang doesn't explain how the world/universe came to be. It was an event that happened 14 billion years ago. Secondly, it has been explained many times that a theory in science is different than a theory in layman's terms. A theory in science is what a layperson would define as a fact. Thirdly, evolution is the processes that explain how we came to be and there is mounds of evidence that support it. You might want to learn something about the subject before you start talking about it as if you actually know something about it.

[Eresh]

Originally Posted by NJLoverinNC

Evolution has nothing to do with the Big Bang? Right. The Big Bang Theory supposedly explains how the universe came to be and everything in it including the Earth. Along those lines, had there been no Big Bang, then there would be no Earth in which to study this so-called Theory of Evolution.

If you want to go even further, evolutionists believe that the theory is factual and steeped in science, etc. Well, if they knew the definition of a theory then they would know that "evolution" is indeed not factual.

Here is the full definition of a theory: 1. a. Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, esp. a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena. b. Such knowledge or such a system distinguished from experiment or practice. 2. Abstract reasoning: speculation. 3. An assumption or guess based on limited knowledge or information: hypothesis.

Well this is amusing; an obvious layman trying to explain (and incorrectly I might add) a combo definition of Big Bang, Evolution, and scientific theory.
Wasn't the original title of this thread something like "why do unscientific people think they are qualified to attack science"? Please do tell!

[rifleman]

Yep. Sometimes all yah gotta do is just stand back and let 'em talk to make your point!

I particularly like the self-serving partial and limited definition of "theory"! [Yet "knowingly" presented as "the full definition"...].

This thread is soooooo predictable, it's tiresome. In the past I've suggested the theory of rote chanting as a means of engraining any old idea into the unthinking un-critical mind.

And BINGO, here it is. On parade.

BTW, just to throw a sabot into the chanting, here's a real definition of theory or hypothesis as it relates to science and evolution:

Evolution as theory and fact - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

... or this larger discussion of the mis-information typically provided by popularist concerns about the facts of Evolution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objecti....2C_not_a_fact

The Big Bang quite correctly simply refers to the origins of the physical non-living structure of the universe. Then, by chance experimental event duplicated uncountable numbers of times, life arose. (...life being simply the ability to self-recreate or duplicate the original format given suitable conditions. It implies no spirit, no understanding, nothing other than repeatability. Religion, being what it is, reads into it heavily, for it's own greedy reasons.)

The abject hatred by theists for Evolution lies in it's successful explanation of how things came to be. It's complete distinction from the Big Bang is a complication that theists won't tolerate in their ongoing battle with rationality, nonetheless that separation is real.

Anyhow, then "life" diversified. Via the observed and proven mechanical means of evolution.

And here we all are!

[ovcatto]

I must be missing something, but I can't see the dichotomy between cosmological evolution, the Big Bang, and that of biological evolution, Darwin. Without one, the other would not have been possible.

Have I missed something?

[rifleman]

Well yes, you have. Let me politely explain, since you asked so nicely.

True, without some origin, there'd be nothing, no substrate nor opportunity for Evolution to have occurred right up to this instant.

But The Big Bang is currently an "evolving" (in the dictionary sense of the word) hypothesis but with some pretty good evidence to support it. Growing evidence I'd add, but still, there may well be alternate solutions or explanations. Science is open, always.

But since that did happen somehow (I mean, we are here, right?), this created the opportunity for a few other things to happen. Probably purely by chance.

Like, for instance:

1) the genesis of countless stars and galaxies and various other phenomena out there. Black holes, red stars, antimatter; all a consequence of subatomic particle or force interactions.

2) the genesis of life, which is at it's simplest the ability to re-create some complex structure just like the last one. It seems to be the happy consequence of friendly molecular interaction: some molecules or elements just happen to pair up well with others, some not so much.

Once reproducing life developed, and a sort of Lego™ system of amino acids were created (not so improbable, we've now found), and endless quintillions of experimental trials per hour, per year, per millenia, were tried out, it's only logical that a few better parings which enhanced that reproductive necessity would happen. Like a kid with a really big Lego set and endless time to play. Eventually he's going to come up with something better than his first trembling effort, right?


So. First, by whatever process, we have a planet which later generates the timely and positive congregation of amino acids. It could have been some other structure, but in the spirit of effective trial and error, the amino acids won because they happened to be a good structure for subsequent growth options.

Then, through that same endless experimentation, better "life forms" arose.

That's what Evolution is. Yes, the basic inorganic chemistry had to be there first, but it's also there on Mars or Jupiter. It's just not so amenable to "life" on those planets. Yet. Here on Earth, it is and was. And so, life would find a way, and it did.

It's been a lot easier to track down the means and processes of Evolution here on Earth than it is to scope out the origins of the universe. After all, we will never have any direct evidence for The Big Bang, while we do have that, in spades, for Evolution, despite the noisy denials from the Creationists. To deny that evidence is to deny the hand attached to your arm.

Evolution is just a name for an inevitable process. We are but one of billions of possible results, but we are by no means the ultimate, as Christianity would arrogantly have us believe, as some Xerox copies of a vastly imperfect God.

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by KCfromNC

I'm hesitant to post on this thread-from-the-dead, but what the heck.

Take a look at Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is research showing that people who have limited knowledge about a subject also lack the self-awareness to know that they have limited knowledge. "The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality"

So not only is it unsurprising that people with limited background in science would fool themselves into thinking they're skilled in it, the research actually shows that it is likely.

This was indeed quite a fascinating read, but will be flatly ignored by exactly those who would best benefit from it! Or who start to read it but realize it probably applies to them.

Thanks for the find!