Showing posts with label scientific method. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scientific method. Show all posts
03 February 2010
07 January 2010
God did that
Makarios writes:
Let's suppose we agree that god is the best explanation. How that will improve our humble human life? Can we use this knowledge to improve our understanding of the natural phenomena?
It is raining, why? God makes it rain. Is this explanation really useful? We now understand that when cloud which is formed by evaporation from some water surface meets cold air, the water moisture condenses and falls down as rain. The latter explanation helps weatherman to forecast weather. The god explanation does nothing useful.
Progress is made because human continuously trust evidence and base our thinking on evidence. If we do not know or understanding something, we do not know. A god-filler explanation serves no purpose and does nothing useful. Can the religious be honourable and humble enough to admit we do not know everything? Religion has passed its used-by date long time ago!
Even though the existence of God best explains the exquisitely finely tuned constants that allow for life on our planet, Dawkins dismisses God as Cause because he can’t "understand God." I wonder how many millions of knowns we’d have to dismiss if we forced ourselves to understand that which made the knowns possible?
Let's suppose we agree that god is the best explanation. How that will improve our humble human life? Can we use this knowledge to improve our understanding of the natural phenomena?
It is raining, why? God makes it rain. Is this explanation really useful? We now understand that when cloud which is formed by evaporation from some water surface meets cold air, the water moisture condenses and falls down as rain. The latter explanation helps weatherman to forecast weather. The god explanation does nothing useful.
Progress is made because human continuously trust evidence and base our thinking on evidence. If we do not know or understanding something, we do not know. A god-filler explanation serves no purpose and does nothing useful. Can the religious be honourable and humble enough to admit we do not know everything? Religion has passed its used-by date long time ago!
03 January 2010
Science vs religion
Adapted from source
| Religion | Science |
| Belief in supernatural | No place for supernatural beliefs |
| Usually include god(s) | Does not accept god without evidence of its existence |
| Essence is miracle (frequently in the form of heresy) | No miracle |
| Based on revelation | Based on well developed methodology |
| Makes predictions that cannot be tested, e.g. astrology | Makes testable predictions |
| Static - once formed never changes | Dynamic - evolves continuously |
| Truth represents the opinion of its leaders | Truth is not somebody’s opinion. It can be independently verified, tested and validated. |
| No built-in correction | Self correcting, wrong ideas are constantly replaced by new ideas which can be tested and verified |
| Questioning is not permissible | Questioning is fundamental |
| God has answer for everything (but the answer does not lead to any demonstrable benefit) | Scientists do not have any hesitation to admit that they don’t know |
| Parochial | International |
| Divides the people | Unites the people |
| Driven by emotion | Guided by logic |
02 January 2010
Where did the laws of physics come from?
Where did the laws of physics come from? We, human of course.
Let's not forget that science is a discipline based on evidences - observations of nature which are repeatable, demonstrable and time-independent. Scientific theories are formulated to "explain" observations. Here "theory x explains observation a" is a short hand of saying that observation a also supports theory x. However, being a generalisation of a set of observations, theory may include other possible observations which were not used in formulating the theory. Experiments will be devised to test whether all these other possible observations are true or not. That's how our understanding of the universe improves. By knowing more about the physical reality, we are able to exploit the physical reality better such as by inventing tools, machineries, gadgets, vaccines, medicine, ....
Human's total body of knowledge increases because of the accumulation of evidences. Obviously without theories, the size of body of evidence will be overwhelming to be useful. Theories help by reducing large sets of evidences into concepts for remembering as well as for application.
Ideally, the collective theories from all fields will represent a model for the physical reality we inhibit. We are still far from understanding everything about our universe. May be it will be an everlasting business. But that's for another post.
On the literal level, the laws of physics come from human invention. We invent ways of grouping evidences and then provide a generalisation to the group in the form of a theory. It is one way to understand the reality we inhibit. There may be other ways. However, the methodology - the scientific method - proves to be useful for the last few centuries and we are adhering to this method when there is no other better methodology.
The questioner is actually asking for a deeper level. The question is only the proxy for "where did the regularities as described in physical laws came from"? Once rephrased in this way, we see a problem. Our physically reality is NOT really that regular? Look at the trees, no two are exactly the same. Look at the leaves, it will be very difficult to find two which are exactly the same. Look at any natural landscape, it will be unique. Moving out to the galaxies, every galaxy is different from another. You and me, even twins are different.
If there were a creator of the universe, why everything are different?
We human are good at finding patterns, repeatable patterns. We ignored the "minor" differences in formulating scientific theory because the purpose of formulating a theory is for us to use as a short hand for a set of observations.
Question: why supernatural is automatically off-limits as an explanation of the natural world?
Answer: [highlight to show] Supernatural observations are not repeatable and demonstrable. It may be an once off observation or a delusion. It has no value in the understanding the "regularity" of our physical reality and it offers no value as an explanation to the observation.
Let's not forget that science is a discipline based on evidences - observations of nature which are repeatable, demonstrable and time-independent. Scientific theories are formulated to "explain" observations. Here "theory x explains observation a" is a short hand of saying that observation a also supports theory x. However, being a generalisation of a set of observations, theory may include other possible observations which were not used in formulating the theory. Experiments will be devised to test whether all these other possible observations are true or not. That's how our understanding of the universe improves. By knowing more about the physical reality, we are able to exploit the physical reality better such as by inventing tools, machineries, gadgets, vaccines, medicine, ....
Human's total body of knowledge increases because of the accumulation of evidences. Obviously without theories, the size of body of evidence will be overwhelming to be useful. Theories help by reducing large sets of evidences into concepts for remembering as well as for application.
Ideally, the collective theories from all fields will represent a model for the physical reality we inhibit. We are still far from understanding everything about our universe. May be it will be an everlasting business. But that's for another post.
On the literal level, the laws of physics come from human invention. We invent ways of grouping evidences and then provide a generalisation to the group in the form of a theory. It is one way to understand the reality we inhibit. There may be other ways. However, the methodology - the scientific method - proves to be useful for the last few centuries and we are adhering to this method when there is no other better methodology.
The questioner is actually asking for a deeper level. The question is only the proxy for "where did the regularities as described in physical laws came from"? Once rephrased in this way, we see a problem. Our physically reality is NOT really that regular? Look at the trees, no two are exactly the same. Look at the leaves, it will be very difficult to find two which are exactly the same. Look at any natural landscape, it will be unique. Moving out to the galaxies, every galaxy is different from another. You and me, even twins are different.
If there were a creator of the universe, why everything are different?
We human are good at finding patterns, repeatable patterns. We ignored the "minor" differences in formulating scientific theory because the purpose of formulating a theory is for us to use as a short hand for a set of observations.
Question: why supernatural is automatically off-limits as an explanation of the natural world?
Answer: [highlight to show] Supernatural observations are not repeatable and demonstrable. It may be an once off observation or a delusion. It has no value in the understanding the "regularity" of our physical reality and it offers no value as an explanation to the observation.
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