Sciencedebate 2008

[tony hipchest]

very interesting site i found in a news article on yahoo that stated either obama or mccain will be much more science friendly than the current administration. see each candidates responses to 14 scientific field related questions and topics. very interresting and informative.

"For the last 60 years, science and engineering have been responsible for half the growth in the U.S. economy. But some reports suggest that by 2010 90% of all scientists and engineers will live in Asia. Asian countries are now graduating 10 times the number of scientists and engineers the U.S. is. Do the candidates have a plan to keep the American economy strong and to tackle America's major challenges like climate change, energy security, education and healthcare - all of which revolve around science? Who really deserves your vote?"

-Shawn Lawrence Otto
CEO, Science Debate 2008

http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id42

[revefsreleets]

Both Kennedy and Eisenhower made a direct plea to the American people and the educational system to add more science to the school curriculum. That dedication to science had a direct impact on the US leading the way for a generation.

Science has been marginalized by several factors that I won't get into, but we desperately need to add a TON of emphasis to math and science in this country if we want to stay even competitive, let alone lead the World in innovation.

[Vis]

We can't have science here. First of all that carbon dating of the bones found in rocks is garbage. Then all the melting ice theories pop up. No, scientists aren't worth their weight in Alaskan crude.

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by Vis

We can't have science here. First of all that carbon dating of the bones found in rocks is garbage. Then all the melting ice theories pop up. No, scientists aren't worth their weight in Alaskan crude.

You are very arrogant.

The problem most Christians have with science is not the science itself, but the philosophical arguments used to tie scientific observations together.

Since when did it become unscientific to question findings? Seems to me that a certain dogma of scientific religion has replaced a dogma of christian religion, and anyone who questions that new dogma faces a new inquisition of ridicule.

Quite open-minded and unbiased, don't you think?

[revefsreleets]

Originally Posted by Vis

We can't have science here. First of all that carbon dating of the bones found in rocks is garbage. Then all the melting ice theories pop up. No, scientists aren't worth their weight in Alaskan crude.

With you on carbon dating....but you seem to be insinuating that some other Country has some secret new replacement for petroleum that we missed out on.

And I'm definitely not ready to say that humans are 100% responsible for global warming, and would consider any scientist who ignores natural heating/cooling trends of the planet as a hack.

[Vis]

just a Palin, Alaska joke.

Humans aren't 100% responsible but we can only control our portion, not the natural trends.

[Preacher]

Vis..

I came back to change my opening line on my post.

I don't want to cast you as an arrogant man. I do not know you and apologize. I do however, feel that it is an arrogant statement. I hope you know what I mean by the difference.

And BTW,

I, and millions of other people in this country, agree with Sarah Palin.

Carbon dating, amongst everything else, is based on human understanding of how events and processes happen. Like I have said. It isn't the observation I disagree with, it is the rationale of the observation and the fact that the resulting conclusions from the observation have an innate bias that all things observed today has acted in the same manner throughout the age of the world.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that a meteor hit the earth. The atmospheric change would most definitely affect what radiation from the sun hits the earth. Would that affect carbon dating? Speed it up? Slow it down? What if there was multiple meteors? What other catastrophic atmospheric changes could affect not just carbon dating, but many aspects of science as we project back?

See, my problem is the assumptions made. Assumptions based on philosophical arguments derived from scientific observations.

[revefsreleets]

What about redshift? Even if we throw out carbon dating (and I won't, because it's accepted scientific fact, but for the sake of argument) there are still many indisputable facts that show a Universe, and, by association, a planet Earth, that's much older than 4,000-6,000 years old.


This is Occam's Razor. Religion has only recently attempted to bend facts and omit inconvenient truths to try and re-establish a completely literal interpretation of the bible. You can't start with conclusions and work backwards, and it's even worse that the conclusions are based on dogma, especially dogma which has itself changed and shifted over long periods of time. This whole fundamentalist shift to literally interpret the bible really just started back up about 30 years ago. Science and religion had found a way to reconcile prior to that...

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by revefsreleets

What about redshift? Even if we throw out carbon dating (and I won't, because it's accepted scientific fact, but for the sake of argument) there are still many indisputable facts that show a Universe, and, by association, a planet Earth, that's much older than 4,000-6,000 years old.


This is Occam's Razor. Religion has only recently attempted to bend facts and omit inconvenient truths to try and re-establish a completely literal interpretation of the bible. You can't start with conclusions and work backwards, and it's even worse than the conclusions are based on dogma, especially dogma which has itself changed and shifted over long periods of time.

Which is exactly my assessment of modern science. It no longer allows for basic questions concerning evolution or method. It is the only science, that is, scientia that no longer assesses its basic methods.

History does,
social sciences do,
theology does.

And yes, theology is classically still considered a science, which is why it is possible to get a Bachelor of science degree in the field of theology.

Rev., my main contention is that it is beyond science to proclaim absolutes beyond what it can currently (that is, this age) see, hear, smell, touch, or taste.

In other words, science can claim that by observation a rock dates 20000000 years old, but that only means that it dates that old as long as the process which is counted on is consistently valid at its current value. The same is true of ALL scientific observation. Thus, projecting back millions of years becomes just that, projection (learned projection), but far from absolute.

In a fit of Irony, the call of science is what bends around to bite science in the rear-end. You can only know what is observable... and because you cannot observe how evolution has happened, cannot observe how decay or other things happened millions of years ago, it cannot be known with certitude. Only with educated possibility.

[revefsreleets]

Originally Posted by Preacher

Which is exactly my assessment of modern science. It no longer allows for basic questions concerning evolution or method. It is the only science, that is, scientia that no longer assesses its basic methods.

History does,
social sciences do,
theology does.

And yes, theology is classically still considered a science, which is why it is possible to get a Bachelor of science degree in the field of theology.

Evolution is ever changing. There are new developments all the time. When we see sexual maturity in a species evolve from a few years to less than one in just a generation or two, it forces scientists to revisit the whole "theory" again. AND evolution worked forwards, not backwards. Darwin wasn't trying to find data to fit his conclusions, his conclusions were derived from observed data. Creationism accepts facts that fit it's preconceived conclusion, and ignores or dismisses the facts that don't fit. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle was arrived at after all other possibilities were exhausted.

Fundamentalism is a regenerated idea. Literal translation worked until it didn't, and enlightenment had it's day, and relatively recently this movement reared it's ugly head again in a direct confrontation with "Science as devil".