On 3/10/2017 2:19 PM, Shay wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> On 9-3-2017 21:37, Shay wrote:
>>>
>>> Is your faith not shaken in "scientific" polling?
>>>
>>
>> I am foremost concerned these days by the way in which science and
>> scientific results are simply dismissed as irrelevant, lies, if not
>> 'evil', by any person without the training/knowledge and for reasons of
>> his/her own, those being political and/or religious.
>
> You don't seem interested in the "scientific" polling question. Let's skip it.

What "scientific" polling question? What am I missing?


> Let's put aside all questions of bias and any reservations about the
> shortcomings (and, in some areas, terrible track record) of induction. Let us
> accept, for the moment, "Science", not as a methodology, but as our
> best-available equivalent of absolute truth.
>
I won't. Science is a methodology. And any "scientist" that talks about 
"absolute truth" is not worthy of the name. Whenever do you hear or read 
the phrase "to the best of our knowledge"? Because that is all we can 
say, in my opinion.

> Do you believe in science yourself? Do you eat junk food or charred meat? Watch
> television within 1/2 hour of bedtime? Drink soda? Buy lottery tickets?
>

Foe me the answers are: Sometimes, very seldom, sometimes, never, seldom 
and never. Not because of "Science" but because they don't interest me.

> Science can only advise us to "Do THIS to achieve THAT." The value of THAT is a
> meta-ethical proposition. We can (possibly) debate the comparative merits of
> such propositions, but we'll need more sophisticated tools than "science QED" to
> do so.
>
> As for explicit denial of "science", everyone I've ever met is an implicit
> deny-er of some sort.
>
I will agree that. Most people I know are or have been in denial of 
something at one time or another. Myself included. It is part of the 
human condition. It helps us get through life. (Only to regret it later, 
if we can.)



> "Believers" implicitly deny the existence of God by acting differently in public
> than in private.
>
> "Non-believers" implicitly deny a deterministic universe by offering (or even
> accepting) value propositions.
>
> The person who says "I don't /believe/ in the Big Bang"--as in "Evidence of the
> Big Bang does not inform my behaviors or moral intuitions"--is arguably offering
> a more rigorous description of a belief we all share.
>
> My only point is that "science" is a poor, lazy argument for the /value/ of
> fetal stem cells (or any other kind of organ harvesting).
>
>

Yes, I agree with that. I'll make no judgement on using "Science" as a 
justification for a belief system. I lost my faith in "Science" when my 
chemistry teacher showed us an experiment to electrolyse water into 
hydrogen and oxygen. He lied. He electrolysed dilute sulphuric acid into 
hydrogen and oxygen. H2O is such a good insulator it takes between 65 ~ 
70 million volts to pass a current through a meter of the liquid.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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