DomKen
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Joined: 7/4/2004
From: Chicago, IL
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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery
Wow is right. So . . . scientists vote for good science now?
Damn. I always thought they tested hypotheses instead.
Occam's razor suggests you're an idiot. It's the simplest explanation that explains the phenomena here. And the data support that hypothesis so far.
Consensus is built by scientists. The bulk of scientists in a field agree on the theories that best explain the data. There are always some who don't agree and that does not invalidate those theories.
If that were strictly true, science would never advance, because all new ideas butt against current consensus.
That's actually what Tyson was getting at -- Islamic science went from inquiry to teaching tradition, and it shut down discovery.
Where he's off base is assuming that's a function of religion, when it was a function instead of governmental focus. (<--that's the part Steel keeps dancing around)
Nonetheless, that's exactly your bias--you want everything set in stone, while science keeps exploring.
The difference between "whiny nuts" (which in this case include a nobel laureate) and dissenting scientists is that they then look to test their hypotheses, where you just dismiss them. For example, finding carbon throughout space, and finding living microbes.
Einstein was a whiny nut until an eclipse showed he was appeared right about gravity bending light.
And a lot of other hypotheses are disproved. But that's not whiny nuts--that's how science learns (disproving something additionally adds to knowledge, vs. mere speculation, positive or negative).
I've already granted, several times now, that Big Bang reigns, and for good reason. You can only function in attack mode, so you keep pretending that's not true, and instead pretending I'm backing this or that, just because I noted that a lot of scientists, celebrated scientists, don't agree with Ken. There are some problems with the Big Bang, and scientists properly wonder about how to best account for these anomalies. To see if the Big Bang has room for them somehow is reasonable. To insist that it has to, and to prop it up in the face of conflicting data, would indeed violate Occam's razor. A scientist properly will be open to both.
On a basic level, it's an appropriate question to challenge whether the universe must have a beginning -- time is relative and local, after all, and stops in a black hole of huge gravity, when even light can't escape. That the universe just always was is a valid line of exploration. So is the idea that it's continually created. As those ideas are tested, they've move from speculation to true or false, and our knowledge will be advanced.
That's science. To not wonder because "we already know" is the antithesis of science--and you embody and demonstrate that antithesis.
Like it or not, you are the danger Tyson warns against, and you're as blind to it as the Fundies in your mutual certainty.
Wrong. The majority of physicists alive at Einstein's time, to expand on your example, knew there were serious problems with Newtonian mechanics and were working on a better view of the universe. General Relativity was both so radical and so simple it took the physics world quite literally by storm. Some older scientists refused to accept it but most of the younger scientists set out to establish whether or not it worked. Within a decade, which considering the equipment that had to be designed and built was very fast, many scientists were trying to prove various elements of relativity.
I, unlike some people, want science to move ahead which means vigorous testing and experiments but let's not keep wasting time and money on stuff that has been tested and is nothing like cold fusion, psi and the rest of the pseudo science bunk that presently competes for research dollars with real science.
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RE: The Erosion of Progress by Religions - 
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