From: sml@rpsyc.nott.ac.uk (Steve Lang)
Subject: Re: The arrogance of Christians
Organization: Nottingham University
Lines: 60

In article <May.2.09.51.49.1993.11841@geneva.rutgers.edu>, you wrote:

> The genius of science is that it discovered that enormous progress 
> in knowledge could be made by isolating the study of physical 
> interactions for the more general areas of study and proceeding
> not by logical argument but by experiment. The scientific method
> is hypothesize, attempt to disprove the hypothesis, if you fail, 
> publish, if others fail to disprove your hypothesis, accept it
> as a working theory and move on. This method is suitable only
> for the study of objects without will, objects which do not
> take an interest in the experiment.

Science does not progress via experimentation but by philosophising.  One
aim of experiments is to investigate the validity of the hyptheses
resulting from the models produced by this thinking process.

> The arrogance of science is the assumption many advocates of 
> science make that the scientific method is the only method of
> serious study, the only one leading to knowledge rather than
> belief. 

Science has one advantage of all other approaches to explaining the world.
It is objective.

> Its further arrogance, is the assumption which arises
> that, since science is the only valid method of thought, everything
> which exists must be the sort of thing which the scientific 
> method can study, and that if the scientific method cannot 
> study it it either does not exist or cannot in any way be known.

Anything which affects the physical world can be studied.  For example,
since we are part of the physical world, anything (including spirits) which
affects our behaviour can be observed.  Science does not make any claims
about the existence or non-existence of objects which do not affect the
physical world.

> Since these asumptions about the nature of the world cannot
> themselves be made the subject of experiment, it is bad science
> to believe them, as well as arrogance, illogic, and just plain
> sloppy thinking.

The purpose of science is to produce a model of the *physical* world.  The
model must be able to explain all past observations and predict the outcome
of future observations.  One of the aims of experiments is to carry out
well defined observations which are objective.

Ideally scientist will except the model which best describes the world, and
the model which realises on the minimal number of assumptions.  At the
moment models which do not rely on the assumption of some *spiritual* world
existing are equally powerful to ones which assume the assumption of a
*spiritual* world.  As the non-spiritual models has fewer assumptions it
should be the currently accepted models.

The scientific process never assumes that its present models are the
correct ones, whereas many religions claim to represent the truth.  The
arrogance of many theists is that they claim to represent the truth, this
cannot be said of scientists.

Steve Lang
SLANG->SLING->SLINK->SLICK->SLACK->SHACK->SHANK->THANK->THINK->THICK
