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Peer Review and the Scientific Process
IainB:
...I believe there are absolute limits to human ability, and that there are phenomena in the universe that are not susceptible to scientific investigation, however advanced our tools become.
-kyrathaba (April 19, 2013, 12:46 PM)
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Yes. The great imponderables, and I have had direct experience of a few of them, such that I know (from that direct experience) certain things to be true, without knowing why/how they can be, or are so. I do not "believe" them.
However, though I would not care to predict whether our tools would be able to advance to the point where they could enable us to understand these previously inexplicable phenomena, given our progress to date in philosophy, metaphysics, science and engineering, it wouldn't surprise me if they did.
Such imponderables may be always susceptible/open to scientific investigation to some limited extent, but currently seem to remain defiantly opaque to our further enquiries, and so the best we will be able to do is create often contradictory theories and/or beliefs about them - e.g., including the Big Bang theory v. constant creation; life v. death; Higgs boson v. non-Higgs models.
Many of these theories might be half-baked, cobbled-together and even simply "made-up" theories explaining away the inexplicable, founded on an ego-centric rationale that we absolutely must be able to explain everything away that we cannot understand, rather than simply admitting that "We just don't know" - e.g., "near death experiences".
In this way, we can have the security blanket of a belief or a theory for everything, and skitter away from the terrifying abyss of our ignorance and the inexplicable - the Unknown - comforted in our assumed knowledge, which is in reality but knowledge of very little indeed.
So we have (say) a theory of Evolution (Darwinism), which, whilst it rather seems to knock the theory/belief of Creationism into a cocked hat, arguably is not necessarily of itself true (it remains an unproven theory) and does not of itself necessarily defeat the theoretical concept of God - though some might prefer to believe or perceive that it does, of course. ;)
Whilst thinking about this, it may be useful to reflect that Darwin was himself a devout Christian and though his research and his theory perturbed him, it apparently did not cause him to lose his faith in God.
However, as I have argued above, getting research through the gates of a peer review process apparently does not of itself prove anything about anything, especially where the scientific method has been abused in the fist place (QED). Thus, if we had some research that seemed to show that Creationism was true after all, and, after several peer reviews it was published in Nature or something, I would have to recommend one read such a publication with a high degree of scepticism.
@app103: I have to say that I feel that your priest's can of soup analogy is an absurd analogy for Faith. Have faith in the love of God, by all means, but not in a can of soup, for goodness' sake. A can is not God. Opening a can of soup will reveal that it is made of pieces of rolled and crimped iron sheet, sometimes galvanised on the outside, and lined with a plating of tin (a silvery metal) or a film of plastic on the inside.
Generally, the soup contained within will be found to be edible, and seems to keep without perishing whilst it is in the unopened can. You don't have to trust the can, but you do need to place some reliance on the proper manufacture of the can and the canning process at the cannery.
You can inspect a can and determine whether the food inside is likely to be safe to eat. Treat with circumspection any cans where there is evidence of damage, corrosion/leakage of the can - the contents may have perished and could be fatally poisonous as air may have entered the can and microbes will have bred in that environment. If the flat ends of the can are bulging outwards, then that is a sure sign of microbial gas production and the contents will almost certainly be fatally poisonous - destroy the can and its contents to avoid the risk of poisoning others.
If otherwise the can looks OK, and if the contents smell and taste OK, then they're likely to be safe to eat. Trust or faith doesn't seem to come into it. Theory and observation do.
"Action which is not based on sound theory or "best"/good practice is irrational by definition." (WE Deming)
--- End quote ---
I could be wrong, of course, but the sort of Faith you seem to be talking about is religious faith in the eternal, in (say) a God. A Christian believer might recite the dogma of the Nicene Creed: "I believe...in the Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost...etc.", perhaps not knowing that history tells us that the creed was apparently invented in about 325AD by the leaders of the RC Church as a compromise to avoid a faction forming amongst the religion's orders. An Islamist would be quick to point that out to you and say furthermore that the Creed is a double-whammy blasphemy in Islam, because:
* (a) it divides the indivisible one God into three bits (this is also potentially idolatrous), and
* (b) one of the three bits is a man (Jesus Christ) who, though he is believed by Muslims to be a true prophet of Allah, was but a man nevertheless, just like Mohammed (pbuh), who is believed by Muslims to be the second and last true prophet of Allah.
That's why:
(i) a Christian cannot convert to being a Muslim without first renouncing the Nicene Creed (the belief in the Holy Trinity), which blasphemy is a sin and otherwise blocks his spiritual eligibility to enter Islam.
(ii) a Christian who expresses his faith in the Holy Trinity is apparently expressing faith in a deliberate and artificial (i.e., made up) fiction.
Of course there's no doubt lots of sophistry to say this is not really how it is, or "look how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin!", or "our Book of God/Allah is more true than yours!", but it is all absurd - arguments over fantasy/myth - and likely to prove of no productive use of your cognitive surplus and may even be potentially life-threatening. So, before we start cutting off each other's head's or blowing ourselves up over whose fantasy/belief is thickest, we might be better off discussing something more useful and enjoyable - e.g. science fiction/fantasy. ;)
app103:
@app103:[/b] I have to say that I feel that your priest's can of soup analogy is an absurd analogy for Faith. Have faith in the love of God, by all means, but not in a can of soup, for goodness' sake. A can is not God. Opening a can of soup will reveal that it is made of pieces of rolled and crimped iron sheet, sometimes galvanised on the outside, and lined with a plating of tin (a silvery metal) or a film of plastic on the inside.
Generally, the soup contained within will be found to be edible, and seems to keep without perishing whilst it is in the unopened can. You don't have to trust the can, but you do need to place some reliance on the proper manufacture of the can and the canning process at the cannery.
You can inspect a can and determine whether the food inside is likely to be safe to eat. Treat with circumspection any cans where there is evidence of damage, corrosion/leakage of the can - the contents may have perished and could be fatally poisonous as air may have entered the can and microbes will have bred in that environment. If the flat ends of the can are bulging outwards, then that is a sure sign of microbial gas production and the contents will almost certainly be fatally poisonous - destroy the can and its contents to avoid the risk of poisoning others.
If otherwise the can looks OK, and if the contents smell and taste OK, then they're likely to be safe to eat. Trust or faith doesn't seem to come into it. Theory and observation do.
-IainB (April 20, 2013, 03:51 AM)
--- End quote ---
Read what I wrote again. Where is the proof before you buy it that there is actually soup in the can and not corn? Where is the proof that it has tomato soup and not cream of mushroom? The label could be wrong. THAT is where faith comes in. You don't truly know what is in the can till you buy it, take it home, and open it. You buy it on faith.
This isn't about anything you can observe, not about whether the contents is safe to eat or not...it's about the actual contents itself, something you can't see through the metal, something you have to believe without any proof at the time of purchase. Is a label proof? No. So, it requires faith. Not religious faith, just common ordinary faith, but faith, nonetheless.
IainB:
Where is the proof before you buy it that there is actually soup in the can and not corn? Where is the proof that it has tomato soup and not cream of mushroom? The label could be wrong. THAT is where faith comes in. You don't truly know what is in the can till you buy it, take it home, and open it. You buy it on faith.
-app103 (April 20, 2013, 05:10 AM)
--- End quote ---
That is one of the most absurd pieces of reasoning I have come across in a while. Not the worst by any means, but it's up there amongst the worst. I hadn't realised that your priest was making such a fundamental and naively elementary error.
The premise is that you don't know what is in the can, so it is bought on blind faith/trust.
It is a false premise, and this is why:
Soup is a food item. The can of soup is bought under a simple contract.
When you buy the can of soup, it is as a result of accepting an "invitation to treat" - an offer to sell the can at a certain price - from the vendor. Three things need to occur to complete the contract:
* 1. Offer.
* 2. Acceptance.
* 3. Consideration (Payment).
The prevailing local/international Trade Descriptions Act and labelling standards ensure that the can is labelled in such a way as to specify its contents in precise detail. There is no uncertainty. The product must (as in Mandatory) be properly described and labelled and be fit for human consumption. It had better be too, because otherwise the producer will face hefty fines/penalties and may even lose his licence to manufacture the product, and this could put him out of business.
There are a string of cases in Contract Case law which set the precedent and the penalties for any breach of contract by the supplier/producer, and the penalties/damages awarded by the courts are usually hefty and inevitably in favour of the consumer.
Not only that, but local and international Food and Drug Administration Authorities come down like the proverbial ton of bricks on producers who do not meet the requisite product standards - hence more hefty fines/penalties in addition to any judgements of contractual breach.
Unsurprisingly, the contents of cans of soup are precisely as labelled - always allowing for the statistical chance of human error and the placing of the wrong labels on the product, which is also an offence and a breach of contract - so it doesn't happen very often. In fact, years ago when I was working as a consultant in the UK on a contract to audit and review/improve a cannery's production systems in Liverpool (UK), I couldn't identify any real potential areas of improvement in their production processes, because they were already squeaky-tight.
Things have only got better since then, because factory automation has almost eliminated human error in large batch production bottling and canning factories.
app103:
IainB, You seem to be very eager to pick apart one example, zooming the entire focus in on that one example. So, much so that you are failing to see the big picture, completely missing the point. Do you even know what my point was? It wasn't about soup, or canned goods, or even religion.
And I feel as though you are making some assumptions about me, believing something without any proof.
Why do you keep referring to him as my priest, and not that priest? Are you aware of what that choice of words implies? Do you think I am a religious person, a Catholic? Because that's the only way he could be my priest. Is that why you are attacking and picking apart my words with such focused energy, the kind of nit-picking energy I normally see reserved for when atheists attack the religious?
I never said he was my priest. I said he was a priest. In fact he isn't my priest at all, he's my sister-in-law's priest, and I don't share his or her faith. At least not their religious faith. I am not a religious person. I hold no belief in deities that can not be proven both real and perfect.
However, I am willing to keep an open mind about some things (not religious things, though). One of the things I am willing to keep an open mind about is the idea that it is perfectly normal and natural for human beings to believe in things for which they have no proof or when common sense tells them not to. Maybe it's a part of human nature to do so. And that the occurrences of this kind of thinking is a lot more common than those that claim they have no faith, or that they don't believe faith is normal, are willing to admit. That even people that claim not to have any faith, do in fact have some faith and that faith plays an important role in some of the things they do and the decisions they make, and that without it, they would be stuck, unable to move forward. Perhaps the very survival of the human species depends on faith, common every day faith.
But are you so willing to be closed minded to that possibility and completely dismiss the idea that faith is a normal part of being human, asserting that it is not natural for the human mind to believe in things for which there is no proof or when common sense tells them not to?
And are you willing to state that nothing in normal daily life requires faith? Nothing in daily life requires a belief in something for which you have no proof? Nothing in daily life requires you to have a belief that acts against your common sense? Nothing at all? Think, observe, watch your own thoughts and actions for awhile before you answer that with a "no". Don't answer until you are sure.
Because that was my point. We are creatures of faith, even those that claim they have no faith. The faith they refer to is religious faith. But that's not the only kind that exists. Normal people are creatures of faith. And sometimes that faith gets in the way of things, leads people to believe things that are pretty far fetched, things that can't be proven false to their satisfaction because they are not the ones making the first hand discoveries that prove their beliefs false. They are stubborn skeptics, in their own way.
And that ties into what kyrathaba said, and why I quoted him in the first place:
As the human species becomes more enlightened (assuming we don't annihilate ourselves first) I think there will have to come a time when there will be an admission that there are things we cannot know/learn by reflection, analysis or discovery. Though I'm sure the opinion I'm putting forth is in opposition to that of many site members, I believe there are absolute limits to human ability, and that there are phenomena in the universe that are not susceptible to scientific investigation, however advanced our tools become.
--- End quote ---
and I believe that common everyday faith may be a sign that those limitations may be very real. Sometimes we are unwilling or unable to see or believe the truth, and that's not due to the limitations of our tools.
kyrathaba:
Religious people are like that. They have their beliefs that they accept on faith. They trust that they are the truth. It won't be until they get to open their can after their death that they will get their proof of whether there is a god inside, something else, or nothing at all.
--- End quote ---
You are correct in this. People who place faith in Christ as a supernatural being and who belief they will be resurrected will either have that faith someday rewarded; or, they'll never no they were wrong because they're forever dead.
However, not all proofs are scientific proofs. Or, perhaps more correctly I should say, 'Scientifc proofs are the be-all-end-all' in terms of understanding what is real. Many very logical, intelligent people, including some prominent scientists (some of the physicists) and medical doctors have come to accept preponderances of anecdotal proofs that their religious faith is valid. Is each and every such case an example of self-delusion?
I recommend, for those skeptical of the claims of Christianity, that they read, with intellectual rigor, Josh McDowell's "The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict." Mr. McDowell was a true-blue atheist and top-notch investigative reporter who took 2-3 years to finally critically collect evidence, analyze his preconceptions, etc.
I believe that religious faith is part of our nature as human belings, but that many have hardened their hearts against it because the world's religions proscribe certain behaviors, and it's also in our nature not to like to be constrained in anyway. We don't want anyone passing judgment on our behaviors or lifestyles, and religions do that, in that they generally contain thou shalts and thou shalt nots.
I also highly recommend, for anyone willing to be intellectually honest and open-minded, that they read Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ / The Case for Faith" (2 books in one).
There's an old story that says that when scientists finally reach the pinnacle of knowledge/revelation (speaking metaphorically), they will find the people of religious of faith sitting there waiting for them.
I don't want to derail the topic by inserting my opinion that most self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics have not been attitudinally/intellectually willing to investigate faith and revelation as alternative tools. But I wanted to challenge skeptics to read the two books I've named above. It'd be an interesting experiment to see how many of them, if any, had a different take on religious faith afterwards.
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