can science prove itself?
25 comments
To shawn101: Can religion?
To Huffers: It is a consequence of Godel's second theorem, but I don't think he would have said it exactly that way, so I'm venturing you are quoting from "Godel, Escher, Bach".
Well, I tried to be fair and guess without using Google, but after posting I couldn't resist, and so I found the quote in the Wikipedia entry on Godel's theorems.
"shawn101"
Yes it can. It's called a hypothesis that predicts a certain outcome and then experiments that determine if the hypothesis is correct.
However, religion says it is correct because it says it is correct. Fortunately for religion, circular reasoning doesn't get in the way of "truth'.
Well, it's not exactly "proof" in the mathematical sense - but it has demonstrated astounding effectiveness at finding answers that, if not right, are indistinguishable from the right one.
I don't know shawn, are you typing on a computer, or did you pray to god that the words you wished to communicate would appear on the internet?
Hmmm. I think that, deep down, you know the answer.
I actually had a fuckwit fundy on myspace try to use that computer argument on me.
There were a pack of them trying to say 'Science' was a matter of faith as much as religion was. (Amazing how many fundies with no concept of science want to believe that)
They tried - when you hit your button to turn on your PC you have faith it will start up but you don't know how it works.
Cue explanation about completing the circuit and triggering the motherboard BIOS and loading the operating system into memory and tracking through the initialisation procedures in the registry.
"Oh, but if you didn't know that you'd take it on faith, and people out there don't know that so they take it on faith"
Later on in the same thread talking about refraction of light and different wavelengths after a long and lengthy explanation on my behalf about physics putting it in layman's terms and citing simple experiments done my Newton.
"See this is what I meant you read about this somewhere and are taking this on faith"
Explain that I'd actually done these experiments myself in high school physics.
"Oh but others are taking it on faith".
TRYING TO GET INTO THEIR FUCKING TINY LITTLE MINDS THAT SOMEWHERE IN THE CHAIN SOMEONE DOESN'T HAVE TO TAKE SCIENCE ON FAITH IS SOMETHING THEY CANNOT COMPREHEND!
</end rant>
Blurb asked if the pope shits in the woods. The last time I checked, Christians had the skulls of their enemies turned upside down and sideways (this allows for maximum spillage), that they used to relieve themselves in. ALL HAIL DISCORDIA!
Well, merely by the fact you're using the development - Digital Computers - of the gay Atheist Alan Turing, an internet requiring telecommunications satellites conceived by the Atheist Arthur C. Clarke, and Windows or Linux on that Digital Computer of yours by the Atheists Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds, you've answered your own question.
Otherwise, do what our own Quantum Mechanic suggests.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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