Science is like the WTBTS...(always coming out with New Light)

by journey-on 67 Replies latest jw friends

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  BurnTheShips

  Examples?

  What examples are you looking for? Just in climate science there are several. Both pro and con and con anthropogenic global warming. Google it. All I am saying is that the grant process is very political and someone with a minority or unpopular scientific view will not get funded. This silences diversity in science and it creates an appearance of monolithic orthodoxy. There may not be an Inquisition as in Galileo's time when he was in the minority and the Ptolemaic system was the majority view, but these dynamics create a chilling effect. In the past, religion was used as a tool to exercise control and further the agenda of the powers that be, in some respects, science can also lend itself to this purpose by the unscrupulous.

  Burn
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  5go

  Examples?

  There are none the Anti-Global Warming and Intelligent Design crowd (By The Way ruffly the same crowd to boot) are always trying to say they are being silenced. Despite the fact they are some of the most heard of deserters in science's history. They just don't have a working theory to explain jack. Which is why they are ridiculed, or ignored by actual scientific community every time they speak up on their ideology.
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  LtCmd.Lore

  Just in climate science there are several. Both pro and con and con anthropogenic global warming.

  So which ones where silenced, fired, or shunned by their colleges?

  All I am saying is that the grant process is very political and someone with a minority or unpopular scientific view will not get funded.

  Well YEAH! Same as the unpopular brand of car will not get bought. If the science doesn't work, why would we fund it?

  But in fact, BOTH sides of the global warming debate have HUGE support.

  If all you're saying is that some scientists get ignored when they don't have evidence, then I'm with you. But I fail to see how that's a bad thing...
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  BurnTheShips

  Science is supposed to learn and make progress through trial-and-error. When something new is learned in laboratories or through mass experiments, it is vetted to find if it is repeatable or not. Thus new learnings come.

  Religion is different by nature. There are textbooks, and the expectation is that the religion and its followers follow the textbook. Those books hold the fundamental laws of the religion.

  Religion that strays from the books -- well, is that really religion or is it a man-made interpretation?

  The problem is that science is practiced by humans, and in human institutions. It is is supposed to be a detached and dispassionate discipline but it is not. It lends itself to the very same kinds of abuse that politicized religion does. Look at scientific research in Nazi Germany and the scientific theories that received funding from the government. Science was a tool used to advance Nazi racial theories. Scientific research that would have gone against the prevailing views would doubtless have been deprecated. Even science is in some respect "man-made". It is a quantification of reality as made through human perception. Without the observer there is no science. And the observer sees what he wants to see. Someone famous once said "Man is the measure of all things".

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  Seeker4

  Science is SUPPOSED to be constantly progressing in knowledge, expanding its grasp of the universe.
  
  I think the point is exactly the opposite of what you're saying, journey on. With time, those scientists who disagreed with the current scientific orthodoxy - from Galileo to Einstein – have ALWAYS been vindicated, PROVIDED of course, that their ideas turned out to be more accurate than the ideas they were questioning.
  
  I think your "new light" analogy is completely off the mark. It is the very nature of science to create an ever more accurate account of reality. Your comment smacks of an anti-science sentiment - yet the fact that you typed and sent it into cyberspace and all of us are reading and responding to it from around the globe in a matter of minutes, all of us using the inventions of science – is incredible evidence of the value of scientific work.
  
  You are in an awkward position there, making fun of science while using the very fruits of science.
  
  S4
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  BurnTheShips

  Just to show that I do not have an agenda, and to balance 5GOs one sided protestation, here are allegations made by pro-Global Warming scientists:

  http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2007/01/31/welch_interference_in_science_stunning/

  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html

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  LtCmd.Lore

  Wait... how did this thread change so drastically?

  It started out, saying that it's a bad thing that science changes its mind so much.

  Now you're saying that it is opposed to change and squelches people with a different theory...

  Well which is it? Does it change or not?
• 

  quietlyleaving

  LTcmd

  Wait... how did this thread change so drastically?

  It started out, saying that it's a bad thing that science changes its mind so much.

  Now you're saying that it is opposed to change and squelches people with a different theory...

  Well which is it? Does it change or not?

  Science changes its 'mind' and adopts a particular position and then those who are opposed to that position are 'squelched'. And on it goes.
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  journey-on

  making fun of science

  To the contrary, S4! My spiritual journey is taking me head on into a science + spiritual viewpoint. I believe our physical

  evolution coincides with our technological evolution and our spiritual evolution. It is almost simultaneous.

  All I'm saying is: Science can lead us astray just like religion can. There are many examples of dishonest researchers

  and scientists postulating something as truth for the sake of notoriety and/or money, or just to cover up prior errors. Since

  most of the masses are not that scientifically savvy, we buy into anything we are told by THE SCIENTISTS only to find out

  years later, the information was erroneous or misrepresented. I'm not a cut and paste kind of person. The information is

  out there for anybody who wants to look into the many examples of scientific "cheaters". It should give you food for thought

  (that is, if you are open-minded enough).

  I
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  Seeker4

  Interesting references, BTS, but in both cases, it was the Bush administration, with its political agenda, that was trying to keep government scientists from reporting what the evidence was pointing to - worldwide global climate changes caused, at least in part, by some human activities. This was not the scientific orthodoxy trying to squelch "new light" about global climate change from fellow scientists, which was the original contention of this thread by journey on.
  
  Thanks for the link to Rep. Peter Welch from Vermont. I know him, and know about these incidents.
  
  S4