Posted by Peter Ceresole on March 02, 2006 at 22:24:50 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: History of Science (was Map dowsing) posted by Lyn on March 02, 2006 at 22:01:47:
It's very important -- in discussing "science" and "religion" with any attempt at intellectual honesty -- to remember that Science is, in fact, a form of Religion. That is, many, many scientific "facts" are based on speculation, or on ignorance of additional facts, and require an entire system of belief in order to function.
That simply misunderstands the whole nature of 'science'. It's not a belief system, it's a process. Nothing is 'science' unless it is openly published and predicts results that are then checked by others using methods that are fully described so that the checks can be duplicated. Any assumptions have to be clearly stated to be such.
Science is about as unlike a religion as it's possible to be. And of course countless scientific 'facts' have been disproven, because the whole process exists to disprove them and replace them with something that better describes things as they are.
There is bad science and there are bad scientists as in any field of endeavour; after all, it's carried out by human beings, but if you care about truth, all religion doesn't even begin to match up to the worst of science. That doesn't mean that religion is itself bad; although I think it's ridiculous that is just my opinion and certainly nothing to do with science. But if we want to know about the world and about ourselves, science may not be perfect but it's by far the best thing we have.