Science Self-Corrects

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Wanting to understand things isn't the same as understanding everything. Alas, I only have a solid understanding of my own field of expertise, and even in that field there are many people who understand much more than I do. Saying "it's a miracle" doesn't contribute to understanding; in fact, it's the same as saying you don't want to understand how it works.

Wanting to understand things is great. Being able to understand that you actually understand something and not simply believing something because it fits your worldview is important.

The fact is that Science can't explain the origins of life. Until it does, you can't exactly say you understand how things work. All you can say is that you have partial pieces that explain how we see things. That's fine. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with people complaining and putting down other for not accepting the partial explanations as an overall explanation.

You believe as you like. I'll believe as I like. I don't put you down for your beliefs, I simply don't see them as fact nor do I see them as truth. Your beliefs are your beliefs and nothing more than that.

Originally posted by Eladar
Wanting to understand things is great. Being able to understand that you actually understand something and not simply believing something because it fits your worldview is important.

The fact is that Science can't explain the origins of life. Until it does, you can't exactly say you understand how things work. All you can say is that you have partial pi ...[text shortened]... m as fact nor do I see them as truth. Your beliefs are your beliefs and nothing more than that.

The fact is that Science can't explain the origins of life.

Assuming you are talking about the origins of the FIRST life, no such “fact” exists. Science already has a partial explanation and that explanation is coming more comprehensive all the time with research and there is no known barrier to prevent it eventually giving a complete explanation therefore it is not a "fact" that science cannot explain it.

But if you are talking about the origins of MODERN life as opposed to the FIRST life, science already has discovered the explanation so, again, and either way, no such "fact" exists.

Originally posted by humy

The fact is that Science can't explain the origins of life.

Assuming you are talking about the origins of the FIRST life, no such “fact” exists. Science already has a partial explanation and that explanation is coming more comprehensive all the time with research and there is no known barrier to prevent it eventually giving a complete exp ...[text shortened]... science already has discovered the explanation so, again, and either way, no such "fact" exists.

You mean there is a king of origins theory about life that isn't by definition first life. I'd say that origin implies first.

Originally posted by Eladar
You mean there is a king of origins theory about life that isn't by definition first life. .

No, I mean evolution explains the origin of modern forms of life while not explaining the origins of the very first life. This is not hard to comprehend.

Originally posted by humy
No, I mean evolution explains the origin of modern forms of life while not explaining the origins of the very first life. This is not hard to comprehend.

It's not hard to understand, it is just laughable that anyone would demand people believe something when it can't tell the entire story.

Originally posted by Eladar
It's not hard to understand, it is just laughable that anyone would demand people believe something when it can't tell the entire story.

By this argument, no one should have believed Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation because Newton couldn't explain what originally caused gravity or explain why gravity does what it does.

Originally posted by Eladar
It's not hard to understand, it is just laughable that anyone would demand people believe something when it can't tell the entire story.

So you say that if there are gaps in our knowledge in something, that means ALL or at least most of that knowledge of that something is wrong?
WHY would that be then? That makes no sense and is obviously false.
I can give numerous examples of partial knowledge of something that is extremely difficult for a rational mind to rubbish just because there are gaps in that knowledge.
PatNovak has just given an excellent example.
Here is some more:

We have only partial knowledge of biology for there is much we don't understand about certain metabolism, neurology etc; so does this mean that all our knowledge of biology is all wrong or even merely mostly wrong? So, for example, the heart probably doesn't pump blood and there is probably no electrical activity in the brain?

Most individual living things that once lived would not have been both fossilized and that fossil still being around today thus there will always inevitably be some gaps in the fossil record; does that mean that the fossils that we DO have today tell us absolutely nothing about what once lived in the past? For example, we cannot tell that dinosaurs once existed because we don't have the fossil of the very first one?

Originally posted by PatNovak
By this argument, no one should have believed Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation because Newton couldn't explain what originally caused gravity or explain why gravity does what it does.

You should only believe laws that can be directly tested.

If you can't repeat it, it isn't science.

Originally posted by humy
So you say that if there are gaps in our knowledge in something, that means ALL or at least most of that knowledge of that something is wrong?
WHY would that be then? That makes no sense and is obviously false.
I can give numerous examples of partial knowledge of something that is extremely difficult for a rational mind to rubbish just because there are gaps ...[text shortened]... cannot tell that dinosaurs once existed because we don't have the fossil of the very first one?

Gaps in knowledge? Lol

Originally posted by Eladar
You should only believe laws that can be directly tested.

If you can't repeat it, it isn't science.

Rubbish. Utter and complete rubbish.

Science is not limited to only those things that you can conduct repeatable experiments on.

Yeah, sure it's helpful to be able to do repeatable testing, but the universe is full of phenomena
for study that are 'run once, non-repeatables'.

The climate of the Earth for example, or THE UNIVERSE itself, and the evolution of life on Earth.

This doesn't mean we can't study them scientifically.

Claiming otherwise is truly moronic.

Originally posted by Eladar
You should only believe laws that can be directly tested.

If you can't repeat it, it isn't science.

First of all, you are changing the subject. Your previous argument had nothing to do with reproducibility. Your last argument was that people shouldn't "believe something when it can't tell the entire story." I responded with an example that showed your argument to be false. Your responded by making an entirely new argument without mentioning your previous argument or my response.

As to your new argument, it shows a complete lack of understanding about what scientific reproducibility means. First it doesn't mean that the entire event has to be reproduced. For instance, we can demonstrate that time happens, and thus assume that a century can happen even though we don't actually perform the test for a century. Second, reproducible also refers to data being reproducible. For instance, scientist #1 can study a fossil and write a paper. Scientist #2 can ask to see the same fossil to verify that the first scientist's paper came to the correct conclusions. Third, you don't have to actually witness something to have reproducible evidence of it. We can know that an hour has passed without staring at a clock for the entire hour. We can also look at fossils and living organisms, and see evidence of evolution, without witnessing every second of the entire event.

Originally posted by PatNovak
First of all, you are changing the subject. Your previous argument had nothing to do with reproducibility. Your last argument was that people shouldn't "believe something when it can't tell the entire story." I responded with an example that showed your argument to be false. Your responded by making an entirely new argument without mentioning your previous ...[text shortened]... g organisms, and see evidence of evolution, without witnessing every second of the entire event.

What he means is that to believe something to be a scientific fact it must be observable, testable, and repeatable.

You and I can believe anything we wish, but that does not mean it is necessarily a scientific fact. Man has observed a century and we know it is repeatable. We have proved this scientifically by calendars.

But nobody has ever seen a million years in the past to record anything that happened or when it happened. In other words, if somebody says something happened a million years ago then he is not speaking scientific fact, but only an opinion of belief.

Originally posted by RJHinds
What he means is that to believe something to be a scientific fact it must be observable, testable, and repeatable.

You and I can believe anything we wish, but that does not mean it is necessarily a scientific fact. Man has observed a century and we know it is repeatable. We have proved this scientifically by calendars.

But nobody has ever seen a mil ...[text shortened]... ened a million years ago then he is not speaking scientific fact, but only an opinion of belief.

The ENTIRE reason you object to such things as a million year span is your belief in creationism. You object from a biased state. You also think you are presenting a 'scientific' argument but what you really are doing is just promoting your own agenda.

You are extremely transparent and fool no one with your pseudo scientific babble.

Originally posted by PatNovak
First of all, you are changing the subject. Your previous argument had nothing to do with reproducibility. Your last argument was that people shouldn't "believe something when it can't tell the entire story." I responded with an example that showed your argument to be false. Your responded by making an entirely new argument without mentioning your previous ...[text shortened]... g organisms, and see evidence of evolution, without witnessing every second of the entire event.

As to your new argument, it shows a complete lack of understanding about what scientific reproducibility means. First it doesn't mean that the entire event has to be reproduced.

I think you really have nailed it there 🙂
The event itself doesn't have to be "reproduced", ONLY the evidence/data for it, that is all! (although reproducing the event itself would be useful to add scientific weight to the evidence ) -THAT is where he is confused with the word "reproducibility" in the context of science.
If I took a photograph of a lighting strike striking my house, to make it scientific proof that this happened, I do NOT have to make the same lighting strike hit my house again! I ONLY have to present the photograph for observation and scrutiny for that to be science. If a lighting strike was an experiment, that may be different. THAT is what he fails to grasp here.

Evolution is not an experiment therefore it doesn't require to be "reproduced" to verify it. It only requires the evidence for it to be "reproduced", NOT the EVENT itself, for that to be scientific evidence for evolution -that is just how science works.

Originally posted by RJHinds
What he means is that to believe something to be a scientific fact it must be observable, testable, and repeatable.

You and I can believe anything we wish, but that does not mean it is necessarily a scientific fact. Man has observed a century and we know it is repeatable. We have proved this scientifically by calendars.

But nobody has ever seen a mil ...[text shortened]... ened a million years ago then he is not speaking scientific fact, but only an opinion of belief.

The evidence has to be observable, testable, and repeatable. The entire event does not have to be these things. By your standard, studying a supernova is not a scientific process because we can't make a supernova on our own. The lightning strike example that humy gave is another good example.

Using your example of accepting calendars as evidence of time passing, this would be indirect evidence of time passing. We haven't actually observed a clock non-stop for all of recorded history. But the evidence itself (the calendars) are observable, testable, and repeatable.

We use different indirect evidence to measure timescales of millions of years (radiometric dating being the most prominent). The evidence itself (the radiometric dating) is observable, testable, and repeatable. We can observe both the samples used in the dating and the process involved in the dating. We can repeatedly test the samples. This meets all your criteria.

In some ways, radiometric dating is better evidence than a calendar, because it is actually a measurement of time as opposed to a record of time (it is more akin to examining a clock than a calendar). If you are going to accept calendars as evidence, you should accept the evidence of radiometric dating.