During the Dark Ages, Christians everywhere believed that a sinister evil force permeated the social and mental environment of mankind and it was up to Christians to fight back and eliminate it, thereby paving the way for a better world in which evil would take a back seat to good. What they ended up doing instead, was creating one of the most evil and oppressive eras in all of History by inventing the Crusades and the Inquisitions. You could say that this was a perfect example of the saying, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions". During this dark era, people were oppressed, tortured or even killed if they questioned the accuracy of any authority, especially religious authority.
Then something happened. People started to question authority, especially religious authority. It wasn't long until inadequate answers to legitimate questions led to rejection and rebellion against the authorities, like Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation of 1517. This period of time was called the Renaissance and led to a radical expansion of knowledge in humanism, art, science, religion, and self-awareness.
So the benefit of having our free will thinking suppressed and oppressed during the Dark Ages with religious blind-faith thinking -- the kind of thinking in which the person assumes that due to their beliefs, they already know all that they need to know and they are always certain -- was an intellectual rebirth during the Renaissance in which people learned to maintain a willingness to discard or modify thoughts and beliefs at the earliest sign of weakness or failure. Thus science was born because, the simplest, most accurate, and clear explanation of what science does and how it does it, is when scientists make discoveries or claims, they must communicate that those discoveries are real and not imaginary. Any flaw in their logic, demonstratable experiment, reasoning, or justification will discredit their discovery because any flaw will do to discredit a discovery or claim and that is what science or the scientific method really is all about in a nutshell...finding flaws. In fact, finding flaws is so important to the philosophy of science, that scientists are encouraged to continually find fault with their own theories, and failing at that, submit their work for peer review so that everybody else has a chance to find fault with their theories.
"During the early 19th century, science and religion enjoyed a compatible relationship."
No they didn't. Astronomy shed its religious relationship with astrology and chemistry shed its religious relationship with alchemy a long time ago. As a result of the shedding of their superstitious religious beliefs, these sciences have made tremendous progress since then.
"Today, Evolutionary Theory is claimed to be an indispensable foundation of science. A key reason for the relationship is identified by physicist Fred Hoyle: 'Orthodox scientists are more concerned with preventing a return to the religious excesses of the past than in looking forward to the truth'. What kind of excesses have made religion so distasteful to science?"
There is no scientific conspiracy to suppress religion and religion is not 'distasteful to science'. Then by falsely associating the foundation of science with evolution, you are revealing your roots as a dangerous religious fanatic seeking conflict and not a seeker of truth. Religion is an essential part of human nature and even has been around longer than humans, especially when you consider other animals that revere their dead in a religious manner, i.e. -- elephants. Nevertheless, an intelligent scientist knows better then to let their scientific work become a political stepping-stone to promote their religious beliefs and therefore will not allow any personal religious beliefs to creep into their work. Sorry to disappoint you.
"I don't know that science has really defined what 'reality' is or is not, I think this is the realm of philosophy. But then again, isn't philosophy a type of science?."
No. All philosophy is not a type science, but science is a particular type of philosophy. It also sounds as if you are saying that if some philosopher doesn't sit down and tell you the difference between reality and fantasy, and to your liking, you will forever be incapable of telling the difference between the two. Is that an excuse or a reason for not trying to pursue the truth?
"There are some people who consider certain events to have happened in reality, just as strongly (I assume) as you think it doesn't. Maybe everybody is fantasizing they know what reality is. I guess it depends on what is meant by reality, and fantasy."
Fantasy is imagination unrestricted by physical reality. I only believe in facts and not fantasy. "The Three Little Pigs" is an example of fantasy and death is an example of a fact. This is because I know for an absolute fact that pigs cannot speak english and cannot build houses as told in the fairytale, "The Three Little Pigs".
"But theoretically, pigs could talk. They just don't. There's no law of nature that states 'Animals cannot speak.' In fact, there was a gorilla that was taught a few words a while back. Lack of examples doesn't render something impossible."
And just what "theory" are you referring to? Physiologically speaking, it is factually impossible for pigs to speak english as told in the fairytale, "The Three Little Pigs," because actual pigs vocal cords and mouth parts are incapable of supporting the correct range of sounds for them to speak english. Since I can provide as many pigs as you want to demonstrate that pigs can't speak english, it is up to you to provide evidence of even just one pig that can speak english. Furthermore, you still have yet to prove pigs can build brick houses, or wood houses, or even straw houses because pigs have hooves instead of hands and hooves are not physically capable of the manual dexterity required for handling tools, drawing schematics, etc.
"Perhaps some of us feel - I do for one - that the idea of a _definitive_ distinction between fantasy and fact is, itself, a fantasy..."
If there really was no distinction between fact and fantasy, there would never be such a thing as a "misperception" because if there really was no distinction between fact and fantasy, there would be no difference between a perception and a misperception. If there really was no distinction between fact and fantasy, there would be no such things as optical illusions. Since misperceptions have obviously been documented to exist, would you mind explaining to us all exactly what "feeling" where this idea of no such thing as a misperception originated from?
"If you actually read the above, you would see I am not saying that we cannot make such a distinction. I am stating my belief that we cannot make a _definitive_ distinction of this kind. I am stating that we can never know 100% percent. To think so is arrogance and one of the more dangerous traps in science. To think so is what lead to burning people at the stake for stating the earth revolved around the sun."
Never say never. I know for an absolute fact that my parents are 100% dead (they were cremated). I know for an absolute fact that you will die someday. So you see, there are absolutes in this world, you just have to know how to look for them.
As regarding "dangerous traps" and "burning people at the stake", you aren't talking about thinking in terms of absolute facts, you are talking about thinking in terms of absolute faith. Like history demonstrates, it is only absolute faith that leads to Crusades, Inquistions, and Holy Wars. Without religion, history would have been a little more pleasant reading.
"Death is not a singular absolute reality though. There may yet be somone who live to be immortal, death is not proved to beyond truth."
Instead of resorting to what might be, why not resort to what actually is known to be? Belief in the afterlife is ambigious, but belief in life-before-death is rock solid.
"And if you can define what you mean by 'death' in a little more depth I will return the favour by dismissing your implied theory that death exists as a discrete non-subjective reality. It will short cut our proceeding if you pay particular attention to defining what it is that you beleive 'dies'."
You would do anything to avoid the issue here -- deny facts, resort to petty discussions of semantics, call me names -- anything to avoid the reality of my point of view. It is an obvious fact that death exists and you are what dies. Whatever it is that can completely define you as an individual being is what ceases to exists. You will die. Do you wish to deny that indisputable fact? Your greatgreatgreatgreat grandparents died. Do you wish to deny that indisputable fact? They ceased to exist as individual personalities, just as you will someday cease to exist as an individual personality.
"The quest of trying to get 'outside' our heads, the quest to 'know reality as it is and not how we would like it to be' is, to me, a fun, useful, and essentially endless quest. I think it is arrogant to believe at any point that we have all the answers. I think there's always more to learn. At least, there has been so far for me."
It is illogical to think that "knowing reality" = "knowing every single answer there is to know". Knowing reality doesn't not imply that when a person is confronted with a phenomenon, that the person can explain the phenomenon, only that the person will know how to tell if that phenomenon is a fact or a fantasy.
"And regarding your favorite fairy tales, Sage, they may indeed be fairy tales, but they have some level of worth as Myth in our culture, worthy of acknowledgement at least on that level."
I agree with you 100%. Myths are very useful so long as you don't start confusing them with actual physical diveality. Imagination and intuition are not confirmation of facts and scientific methodolgy never relies on such hocus pocus. Never. Postulates are deduced and not imagined and postulates are logical extensions of facts and not projections of imagination.
Am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man or am I a man dreaming he is a butterfly?"(ZHUANGZI SPEAKS)
If you look at the thought behind Zhuangzi's question, the real question concerns the paradox of perception. Simply put, there is nothing that anyone can directly experience (except for our own inner-self) for everything that we experience happens through the filtering of our minds first. For example, what we "see" before us is never what is really in front of us. The eye detects the colors and contrasts of a scene and that image is passed on to the vision area of the brain. From there it is interpreted by the mind. The mind can only interpret that which has been labeled and categorized from previous experience or that which it has been taught to see. If the mind interprets this image incorrectly, an optical illusion is said to "exist". Because of our detachment from actual physical reality, we must resort to outside means to determine what reality actually is by using agreed upon standards such as the scientific method or a ruler.
"We cannot, in fact, ever step out of our senses. We can *speculate* as to what exists outside of our senses. That is what science to some degree is about. But you cannot have a 'direct' perception of reality unmediated in some way by your senses."
Science is the art of going beyond speculation. Science can start out with speculation but it never remains there. That's the trademark of science: Progress. For example, what exists beyond our senses in outer space is factually confirmed everyday via telescopes.
"I think the Sage is just an arrogant frog in the well who can't imagine a world beyond his own little perspective on a patch of sky."
I can imagine many worlds beyond my own, but unlike most people I have enough common sense to realize that when I am imagining a world beyond my own, it isn't a real world I am imagining.
"Physical reality is perceived as 'what's out there', but you claim to be the only one who has grasped it's true essence! Sorry, that's plain delusional! And frankly these odd delusions of yours are just not that interesting. Meanwhile you show no interest in the ideas of others, but rattle on endlessly about your "frog in the well" worldview."
That's not my problem, that's your problem. Your other problem is that you blindly believe that the essence of what you perceive can never be known, despite the existence of misperceptions to demonstrate that we can come to know the flaws in our perception of what is real, and then correct for those flaws.
"Sorry, but this seems pathological to me. Perceiver and perceived are forever bound together. You could say we have a difference of opinion, but you claim to own the truth just as a Fundamentalist Christian claims to know the only true God. What distinguishes you from the religious fanatic? Oh yes, those esoteric facts -- which only you recognize!"
If you really want to prove that the perceiver cannot be separated from the perceived, that mental imagination cannot be separated from physical reality, then let's see your proof. Overcome death by your perception, bring an imaginary dragon to life. You are once again assuming that your mental perceptions magically create physical reality.
"How do you aspire to perceive the world if not through subjective perception? How else CAN you percive the world?"
I don't aspire to perceive the world, I aspire to know the world. Logical thinking and methodology is how we know that human perception is often misperception.
"Just because something has not yet been perceived does not mean it is either fantasy or non-existent..."
Give me an example of something that has not yet been perceived and is neither fantasy or non-existent.
"If something has not yet been perceived, there is not yet a perception of that thing. Therefore, it is impossible to say. However, this does not necessarily imply that there is nothing to be perceived. It simply means that we have no perception of it yet."
To be or not to be...this can get quite confusing, can't it? To put it in the most clear terms as possible, what has not yet been perceived in physical reality, cannot logically exist in either our vocabulary or our imagination because we cannot describe in words that which we have never heard, seen, smelled, tasted, or touched.
"Sure but how do you know something is green? Your brain doesn't have built in labels for colours. If you show me something which you think is Green and my label for the 'Green Frequency' is Blue, I'm going to think it's Blue."
I know something is Green because I speak english. In english grass is called Green. In chinese it is called "Look sick". Either way, thanks to scientists, we know that both terms are refering to the same exact specific range of wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you have a physical problem in understanding english or seeing colors, there are objective ways to determine that as well, such as color blind tests or english classes.
"But we have not perceived everything there is to perceive. We have an incomplete record of all living things on this planet only. To say that we have reached the point where we can say there are no exceptions is like lifting up a single stone, finding no ants and deducing that there are no ants under any rocks anywhere, nor have there ever been or ever will be and ants don't exist anyway."
If no one ever saw an ant, where would the concept of the ant been able to originate from, factual observation or make believe? If we have not perceived everything there is to perceive, then what is left for us to perceive? Be specific please. Tell us exactly what we have not perceived yet. If you cannot tell us exactly what we have not perceived yet, then obviously you don't know what there is left to perceive. All you can tell us exactly are what we know for a fact exists and not what shoulda, coulda, or woulda exist. To assume that "UFOs" or "God" shoulda, coulda, or woulda exist is not "connecting with reality" but "connecting with fantasy". Physical reality is the only invariant reality that exists outside of our minds. If there is any other reality that exists outside our minds, I am willing to hear it, but be prepared to provide some facts or evidence to back up your statements. Any other kind of evidence other than physical, is called make believe. Without physical facts or evidence to back up a particular statement, that particular statement will not be a reflection of physical reality but a reflection of belief.
It is a widely believed myth that a singular Scientific Method exists and that all scientists follow this one methodology. Yes, all scientists use some kind of methodology in their work, and most of these methodologies have many steps in common with each other, but there is no one method for finding flaws. Although in reality there is no such thing as a Scientific Method, it is a great metaphor for "correctly conducted science" -- and that is how I use the word.
So what is "correctly conducted science"? As I already pointed out beforehand, scientists make discoveries or claims and then they must communicate that those discoveries are correct. Any flaw in their logic, demonstratable experiment, reasoning, or justification will discredit their discovery. Then there are the many different steps required for an acceptable scientific proof. Among them are:
- Make logically consistent and valid statements.
- Justify statements using deductive and inductive reasoning.
- Make valid conditional arguments. The most common forms of invalid arguments is affirming the consequent and denying the antecedant.
- Learning what makes a guess "educated" and not a fantasy.
- Justify a scientific hypothesis, ie -- what makes a good test of a hypothesis.
- Understand the difference between causation and correlation, and valid forms of each.
- Justify a statistical hypothesis. This implies an understanding of probability, estimating the strength of a correlation, and testing for correlations.
- Justify a causal hypothesis.
I have taken and condensed all of this information from the University textbook, UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING by Ronald N Giere, ISBN 0-03-063068-1. I would suggest all people serious about conducting science to obtain this book as a reference of how to conduct their work.
I cannot cover all these points and keep this page to a reasonable size, so let me just cover a few of the most misunderstood ones...
ISN'T THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD ABOUT NOTHING BUT PURE LOGIC?
Logic is one time proven method for finding flaws, since logic deals with the concept of the resolution of uncertainty in any experience, statement, or thought. The purpose of logic is then to kill uncertain ideas and never propagate them. But now take a look at the following statements:
- Premise 1 : All Romans are liars
- Premise 2 : Ceasar is a Roman
- Conclusion : Ceasar is a liar
Do you see anything wrong with this picture? Well there certainly is nothing wrong with the logic; the logic is perfect because if all Romans are liars and Ceasar is a Roman, of course Ceasar must be liar. Logic does not determine the truth of statements, it only determines the truth of the relationships of statements to one another. For example, if we were to say that if all Romans are liars and Ceasar is a Roman, therefore Ceasar is not a liar, that would be considered illogical or a logical fallacy. How can Ceasar not be liar if all Romans are liars and Ceasar is a Roman? But outside of the logic, we really don't know for a fact if all Romans are liars or that Ceasar is a Roman, we presume they are true in order for the statements to make sense -- that's why we call them premises. Logic alone cannot determine if all Romans are liars or if Ceasar is a Roman, for that you would need to do some research to prove or disprove the actual truthfulness of the premises. This highlights the fact that logic, all by itself, is irrelevant to helping us to distinguish fact from fantasy. We need more then logic if we want to pursue truth and historically the only thing that has ever been found to compliment logic in this manner is the philosophy of science.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that science is not a island; that science relies on many other things in order to work. Science ADDED many things to logical thinking systems and one of those things was to say that it isn't enough to simply prove that a hypothesis is logically true, it must be verifiably true and confirmable with evidence. One concept that science added was that for a hypothesis to be viable, it must be able to predict new facts and not predict the existence of phenomena that could not be provable. That eliminated the uncertainty that could be present in the precepts of any hypothesis, which makes it logical and scientific.
WHAT MAKES A GUESS EDUCATED AND NOT A FANTASY?
In order to conduct a proper scientific investigation into any physical, religious, or social phenomena, it is first necessary to gather as many observations on that phenomena as reasonably possible. This is the most difficult and painstaking part of the entire scientific method and the one most easily overlooked in sufficient detail.
Remember that cause-and-effect are the cornerstone of the scientific method. This means that observed phenomena must be subjectable to analysis, controllable through cause, and predictable by deduction or induction. Effects cannot logically come before the cause.
There are three very important things to realize at this point of the scientific method:
- IT IS THE OBSERVATION THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE AND NOT THE OBSERVERS REPORT. The observers report is the result of what people interpret what their easily fooled senses conveyed to them. The problem is that individuals naturally tend to view objective facts from their individual (and subjective) viewpoints.
- OBSERVATIONS OF PHENOMENON MUST BE REPRODUCIBLE AT WILL, BY MECHANICAL MEANS, UNDER PREDETERMINABLE CONDITIONS. This is so that many other people can duplicate and verify your results following prescribed techniques.
- FACTS ARE NEVER WRONG, only experience, testimony, interpretation, and mathematics supposedly based on facts are wrong. Facts never twist themselves around and facts never lie. People (and even Scientists) do, but never facts! One can argue with opinions but one cannot argue with facts.
MAKING VALID CONDITIONAL ARGUMENTS
Bias is the intentional or unintentional introduction of systematic undetected error into experimental results. Every scientist must be familiar with how to eliminate bias from their own or be able to detect bias from other's work in order to help prevent errors from accumulating.
In order to help eliminate bias, a scientists must at least familiarize themselves with the four most deadly and common subjective traps:
- RESORT TO EXPERIENCE. Everyone experiences dreams but that doesn't mean that whatever anyone experiences in those dreams is reality or not (unless it happens to accidentally coincide with reality) and therefore dreams are not a valid form of scientific proof of anything (outside of that dream). Experience is much the same thing except you choose what you experience or don't experience and therefore experience is limited to what you happen to choose or not choose. That also makes experience subjective, unreliable, and prejudiced. Two people can go through the Matterhorn at Disneyland and experience two different things. One can experience fear while the other can experience fun. This sample contradictory experience shows why experience cannot be a test or proof of scientific or spiritual truth. Experience cannot really describe beforehand what it would be like for you or me to ride the Matterhorn. For example, I might find the ride boring. The experience also needs to be validated by facts. Without a material (or factual) description of the Matterhorn, your experience means nothing. Without a material (or factual) description of God, experience means nothing. I also did not have to believe in the Matterhorn beforehand for it to exist or to experience it.
- RESORT TO TESTIMONY. Eyewitness testimony is useless because testimony (all by itself) cannot be proven to be free of optical illusions, mental delusions, or outright lies. Remember that the scientific method and logic are better than any testimony due to the nature of our easily fooled and gullible minds.
"I believe we are assuming honesty when we cite testimony."
Insane people give an honest testimony when they say they converse or listen to God and Moses on a minute-by-minute basis, but so what? Honesty is not the same thing as reality.
- RESORT TO INTERPRETATION. Interpretation is not science but storytelling. Data requires no interpretation and only needs to be presented "as is" if you want to have an unbiased appraisel of the data (Of course, if you don't want to have an unbiased appraisel, then feel free to mislead your colleagues by "massaging the data" so they can be sure to get the hint of what the "correct viewpoint" is that they should be taking)
"There is no such thing as facts, only interpretations"
The definition for interpretation is "To construe in the light of individual belief, judgement, or interest, a mental representation of the meaning or significance of a fact," therefore when you ignorantly state that "there are no facts, only interpretation" you are contradicting yourself by actually saying that "facts aren't facts, only construal of facts are facts". Sorry buddy, but I don't believe in any interpretation, I only believe in facts and you not only have none to present, you are irrational enough to admit you have none.
"I can dump a system log of times, dates, addresses, packet types, etc. but those 'facts' are meaningless until interpreted."
All facts are meaningless. Meaning is a religious component, not a scientific one.
"But if raw data is indeed objective then it requires subjectivity to begin to possibly understand the significance of it."
Subjectivity and objectivity are not characteristics of data or reality but only the characteristics of the way humans think.
"Complete objectivity would imply being totally unbiased. That seems to be an impossibility."
It is true that humans are incapable of being totally objective and unbiased so the problem is to take the burden of proof off of humans and to place it on something else. That something else is called the scientific method. Methods cannot be biased because methods cannot think and have subjective opinions.
"Real scientists do not try to remove all bias, but rather to determine the 'error bar', that is, the bounds of error for their measurements. No real experiment has ever been performed with an error-bar of zero. Thus, there is no bias-free science, thus no objectivity, other than as an unobtainable goal."
A scientifically conducted experiment can at least guarantee the results to be within a certain small range of error, thereby making the error irrelevant. It seems that human nature is to take anything resembling the facts and make them fit their own private interpretation -- A blurry photograph can be an alien spacecraft or a streetlight depending on who's doing the interpreting.
"In many cases that's entirely true, but there are cases though where it's not easy to say just what the proper interpretation is."
The only good interpretation is no interpretation.
- RESORT TO MATHEMATICS AS A PROOF OF A THEORY OR HYPOTHESIS. Mathematics is not proof of reality, only evidence is proof of reality. You have to have a correct theory before you can derive any applicable equations (read: non-fanciful descriptions) from that theory otherwise the equations will amount to nothing more than just meresay. The postulates and theorems of physical mathematics are determined by how useful they are at being applied to physical reality and therefore it is valid observation that determines the methods or definitions that mathematics is allowed to use or not. This is confusing the map with the landscape. The map is not the landscape it is only the representation of the landscape. Mathematics is not reality, it is only a representation of reality.
HYPOTHESIZING
After all the data and observations have been made, the data must now be processed into as MANY humanly possible, workable, educated guesses that can explain the known empirical results. This is actually the fun and usually easy part of the scientific method.
Note: In science, to make an 'educated' guess does not mean 'to have a degree', it just means to know all relevant facts to a phenomenon. Institutionalized education actually can be harmful to the spirit of science, because it induces a belief in people that there are always 'right' answers to questions, and that it is the duty of the student to parrot whatever their teachers told them to parrot.
An important distinction to make here is the difference between basing a hypothesis on unknown facts and using a hypothesis to predict new and unknown facts. A hypothesis that is based on unknown facts is not a scientific hypothesis but pseudo-science. For example, the hypothesis that flying saucers are piloted by ETs is not a scientific hypothesis but uneducated guessing, because it is not a known fact that ETs are visiting us (for that matter, flying saucers aren't known to exist either, but this is just an example).
ELIMINATION OF HYPOTHESIS
After as many hypothesis have been made as humanly possible, the scientist must now call on others to objectively criticize their results and eliminate as many of the hypothesis as humanly possible. In order for the critics to remain objective, they must not take part in the hypothesizing, since hypothesizing is a subjective process and could result in emotional (and thereby biased) involvement. There are four points that must be considered with each and every hypothesis:
- If the hypothesis does not explain all observed data, it must be discarded.
- Eliminate all fantasizing that has taken place, immediately. Pseudo-scientists often confuse hypothesizing with fantasy. Hypothesizing does not involve visions of dragons and damsels in distress whereas fantasy does. Fantasy is when hypothesizing demands the existence of phenomena that do not, in fact, exist or their existence cannot be proven one way or the other.
- Any appeal to "expert" opinions or "authority" is ground for immediate dismissal of a hypothesis, since there is no such thing as an expert or authority from a scientific viewpoint.
- The hypothesis must be able to predict new and never-before-observed facts. This is by far the most important and most successful of the four points. This prediction is often known as the "null hypothesis".
VERIFICATION
Now that the number of legitimate hypothesis have been narrowed down a bit, it is time to perform new experiments and gather new data to corroborate the null hypothesis. If the experiment fails, it proves that the hypothesis was false. The scientist must be willing to discard or modify any hypothesis at the first sign of weakness or failure at this stage. To eliminate the possibility that the experimental results are not due to some other unintentional factor(s), variations of the prescribed technique must be tried.
THEORY
Now if your hypothesis has made it this far, then it graduates to...become part of a theory (and not necessarily a fact yet!). Further processing is necessary for the theory to become a law or a principle, but you get my point! In the meantime, the scientist must assume that the theory is not absolute truth, but only a poor substitute. In order to maintain progress, the scientific method requires the scientist to go back to step one and start gathering new data and new observations that will expose flaws that must be present in the theory. This will help to refine the theory and ensure progress is being made.
Blind-faith is so strong because blind-faith can hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil -- and facts, evidence, and the scientific method are considered evil by blind-faith people. Using pseudo-scientific reasoning, they claim that whatever it is they believe in is 'above reasoning' and 'above logic' and 'above science'."
(The Sage)
Any attempt to take a non-science and make it appear to be a science, is called pseudo-science. Pseudo-scientists will proudly display their own self-made titles such as "Memetics Engineer" or something like that. While failing to address many or all of the things necessary for a science to be part of the scientific method, they will also throw in a few other things as well:
PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS
Pseudo-scientists usually go straight to the hypothesizing step of the scientific method first and stay there forever, without ever leaving. They will mistakenly call their hypothesis, "a theory", and they usually subscribe to the common make-believe myth that anything is possible, when in actuality only those things that are known to exist can be used as proof to propose the potentiality of something that might exist. The most common error you will find at this stage is their confusion of confabulation with hypothesizing.
Good ideas and excellent explanations of "the way things work" are a dime a dozen, but one successful experiment is worth a million hypothesis.
PSEUDO-SCIENCE SPEAK
You will notice that many of pseudo-scientists will speak their own language. They will take many common everyday scientific terms and abuse them in different ways. They will claim that it is because they are the only ones using those terms in the right way and it is all the other scientists and people in the world who are using them wrong. Some will go so far as to even invent new and completely different defintions as they feel fit.
PSEUDO-REVELATION OR INTUITION
You may notice a vague similarity between pseudo-scientists and cultists or even Televangelists. That is because they are of the same class of people. You may also notice that many psuedo-scientists even belong to cults themselves or are fanatics for their own personal religion to the point that they will witness to you as they demonstrate various principles of their ideas. Sometimes they will say things like, "God revealed this to me" or "It came to me in a flash of intuition" and other magical, mystical statements like that.
PSEUDO-PERSECUTION
Pseudo-scientists will quickly point out how many of the great scientists in history were persecuted in the same way as they are being persecuted. They imagine themselves in the same league as these geniuses. They like to point out how quickly scientists back then were willing to discard those new ideas because they didn't fit into the world as they knew it then. But how quickly these pseudo-scientists forget the science of those days as well, such as epicycles, leeches, snake oil, and so on. And how it was science that eventually told us these things were false. Science proved that epicycles, leeches, and so on weren't factual or truth. Science makes progress and gives results and that is two marks of something that is truth and two marks that pseudo-science fails at.
The scientific method is like the person who says, "I'm not racist, I hate everybody!". Likewise, science isn't prejudiced, it criticizes and picks apart every new idea and not just pseudo-scientists' ideas. Real scientists are doing the only right thing by rationally disagreeing in the absence of proof instead of gullibly agreeing by blind-faith. Skepticism doesn't kill ideas, it actually gives logical and objective ideas room to grow by killing off stifling, make-believe fantasies. It is just that the pseudo-scientist's ego can't handle legitimate criticism.
"Frankly, I would consider it sacrilegious to submit my ideas to dissection by non-believers. If you do not want to accept my ideas, that is your business. However, it is highly unfair for someone to accuse me of fraud, just because you find it hard to believe in my radical new ideas."
It isn't whether it is hard to believe in your "radical new ideas" or not for it is easy to believe in anything from bugger-bears to Mother Goose to God. And it is fair to accuse people of fraud when it just might be possible that they are deceiving their gullible followers (or it might even be something as common as mass delusion). What is really hard to understand is the lack of reasonability. You claim that it would be sacrilegious to submit your ideas to dissection by non-believers but that doesn't sound like an honest answer. Why tell the whole world (including non-believers) about your ideas if it would be sacrilegious to even tell them about it in the first place (since you would be putting them in a position to sacrilegiously slander your claim)?
"Remember that 'scientific method and logic' once was absolutely certain that rocks could not fall from the sky -- and scientists refused to investigate because they *knew*, on the basis of their logic, etc., that stones couldn't fall from the sky! They didn't have to *see*, they *knew*!"
You forget that it was never scientific method and logic that was absolutely certain that rocks could not fall from the sky...it was people! People who didn't apply the scientific method and logic.
"There is no part of the world independent of any other part. Ever hear of quantum physics? Others have asked you that, but you live in your own private world of 'laws' with its own peculiar collection of 'facts'."
What you don't understand is that not everything that is called a science is actually a science. I choose to live with reality the way it is and not the way I or you or anyone else wishes it were. New Age Quantum Mechanical speculations mean nothing unless they can demonstrate something with physical evidence rather then demonstrate storytelling abilities.
"SCIENCE is an assembled CHAIN of related facts which grows longer and incorporates more 'facts' into it as time progresses. One CANNOT state that just because a fact or observation is not yet incorporated into the chain that it is a 'fantasy'. We don't have to swallow the ET hypothesis to accept the reality of unidentified objects in the sky. They may then be studied without bias and eventually be incorporated into the chain."
Correct, but more to the point, one cannot PRESUME what facts have yet to be incorporated into the chain BEFOREHAND since no one knows what those facts are yet, and to do so would qualify as self-fufilling prophecy and not science. What people are trying to do when it comes to UFOs and psychic phenomenon is resort to what they wish reality were instead of resorting to reality as it actually is.
"You have your beliefs backed by your facts, you have no contradictions in your own mind, you do not entertain fantasy or make believe but do you entertain the possibility that you may be wrong? Do you accept that at some time, new information could proove as fact that which you currently call fantasy?"
I admit that I am fallible and that is why I rely on the scientific method instead of relying on beliefs. That is why my standpoint with regard to any beliefs, including my own, is that all beliefs are irrelevant.
"We cannot know the 'Ding an sich' (the thing-in-itself) but only our internal representations and models. Scientists routinely invoke invisible intangibles to explain the world."
If it isn't perceptable under one or more of the five senses, then it isn't physically real but only mentally real. That's the difference between fact and fantasy.
"What about quarks, neutrinos, magnetic fields, and black holes? Such entities are inferred from observation and theories. Are they 'real things', like tables and chairs, or merely convenient mental constructs? Philosophers of science still debate such questions."
Observation is also called seeing, just in case you didn't notice, and all of the things you just mentioned are things that have been confirmed to exist with evidence, either directly or indirectly or whether seen or unseen. And while philosophers of science still debate such questions, scientists do not, since logically, one cannot argue with facts.
"Science itself is nothing more than storytelling. For example, what 'gravity' is, is an explanation. It is a 'story' that we use to predict future events. When I drop an apple, and it falls to the ground, the plain facts of the matter are: I dropped the apple, and it fell to the ground. Gravity is the *story* we construct to explain 'why' the apple fell."
You can feel gravity - especially if you are overweight. In fact, weight is one way that the force of gravity is measured. Gravity is not an explanation, it is an observation. So no, you nor anyone else absolutely can never make a compelling case that actual science is storytelling and interpretation.
Science is evil. Without science there would be no horrors like atomic bombs, chemical warfare, pollution, or handguns.
Science isn't the moral evil that many try to make it out to be. Scientists and technicians discover and invent things, then it is up to the politicians, religious fanatics, businessmen, and the military to rationalize away the use of those discoveries for good or bad. Do you understand what I mean by rationalization, as opposed to reasoning here? Reason is a method by which I can approach reality (with a "check list" that can be verified by others) whereas rationalization (which cannot be verified) is a method by which I can make up excuses for my actions (especially immoral ones). Whereas people rationalize racism or religion, they reason philosophy and science. A can opener can open a can just as easily as it can open a finger. The error isn't with the can opener or the inventor of the can opener but with the user because can openers can't make decisions over what they will or will not open. A rifle can kill a deer as quickly as a family member. The error isn't with the rifle or the inventor of the rifle but with the user because rifle's can't make moral decisions over what they will or will not kill...people do!
The problem with science is this: There are so many initial conditions that we do not or cannot know, how can you fully trust it?"
That isn't a problem with science, that is only a personal problem with not knowing all the initial conditions. Rest assured, there are no conditions that you cannot know, but you have to at least try and find them. Logic coupled with the scientific method gives us a checklist by which we can compare untrustworthy fantasy and make believe with trustworthy reality.
"Science is full of paradoxes and contradictions. Doesn't that make it unreliable?"
It isn't science that is full of paradoxes and contradictions, it is people (including scientists) and/or their observations that are paradoxal and contradictory. Don't keep making the mistake of confusing the two.
"Even Science, in attempting to learn more, runs into questions that it cannot answer. For example, the theory of evolution is popular in scientific circles, but science cannot explain how life ever began in the first place."
There is nothing that science cannot eventually answer. Do you expect science to instantly have all the answers? I hope not. Unless you can prove that science will never be able to come up with an answer, the most you could say is that there is insufficient data to form a scientific conclusion on the matter at this point in time. It is only a matter of time before they will have an answer.
"Do you find your definition of facts and your opinions well received in the scientific community? I would think not."
It is irrelevant what the scientific community thinks. Appeal to celebrity is not science. What matters isn't what other sheep in the pen think, what matters is what the mechanically repeatable physically demonstratable facts are.
"Well, Sage, how do you explain why the world hasn't embraced you yet as the Messiah of a new Golden Age of Reality? If what you say is truth, shouldn't this truth be so overwhelming that everyone in this newsgroup, with the all the world soon following, be converted to your line of thinking? Gee. How does it feel to be the only one to possess the truth? Will they be crucifying you next? I mean how can 'they' ignore all your 'scientific evidence' and 'logical deduction'? How is it possible that there are so many others who experience the world differently from you, when yours is the only true experience?"
For thousands of years, people have been gullibly flocking from one illogical religious belief to another. History demonstrates that most people could care less what the difference between reality and fantasy is and you apparently are no exception. You, like most other people, are such a good little sheep, always looking for that special teacher you can follow around like some female doggy in heat.
"I do not worship science."
Neither do I.