> Put another way, the galaxies that the JWST shows are just the same size as the galaxies near to us, assuming that the universe is not expanding and redshift is proportional to distance.
This sounds like "I can show anything is true assuming I can set the necessary conditions as I please".
>Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic.
Wrong. Nothing is presented as unquestionable truth in science. It is the predominent model. Just because some people might seem present it as TRUTH, doesn't mean that any scientist actually thinks that it is. Or, put another way, if shown a better model, scientists will instantly change their views to the newer better model.
The only place one can find TRUTH, never changing TRUTH, is in religion. You are never able to change someone's religious worldview with new facts. Shit, Jesus christ himself could come back to earth, and if he said that christians got it all wrong, the christians would hang him on the cross again - how dare Jesus fluck with their beliefs?
I think it's the same as putting "truth" in quotes since we aren't actually talking about provable/verifiable things. Religion is all about faith which is literally believing in something that can't be proven, else we would call it facts/truth. The commenter is using all-caps to designate this as a word people are using incorrectly.
One is it is kind of a metaphor for how religious people seem to think about "truth." They think that they have the one truth, the only truth, as ordained by their spirit entity, like Zeus, Ishtar, Ra, or JHWH (the christian god). That their "truth" is the answer to everything. Like in the christian god-entity, people can walk on water or bring dead people back to life. That's part of the TRUTH. Personally, I prefer to use the words "facts" and "evidence" rather than the world "truth", because truth is a very generalized and abstracted concept that can have many meanings and make conversations muddy. If one is saying 1+1 = 2 is truth, and use the word that way, then ok. But usually that is not how the word is used. It's kind of an amorphous term.
Also, it kind of makes me chuckle to write it that way because if you see religious people write or comment, they always use all-caps when they write, in the weirdest ways. So it is mimic of them to some extent. Not just on that word, but all kinds of random words in all-caps.
You make a lot of assumptions. Why people believe things and their reasoning process varies wildly. For myself, religion is not a product of an intellectual excercise but of experience that was a product of faith. What you are saying is if you presented me with an argument you believe to be factual, even though you claim nothing is indisputable in your comment you still think your argument would overrule my experience which you do not share. You speak only from your perspective and I agree that what you consider fact is never beyond dispute and as such it would be impossible to change my mind on matters I have experienced first hand based on what you are presenting. Religious beliefs require accepting there are things we as humans simply cannot understand or process, existence beyond our ability to percieve or comprehend directly unless we measure indirect effects of course, that is why you need faith.
It makes no sense to argue with rules limiting your reasoning and operation to a scientific process when speaking to a person who does not share those same restrictions. Science does lead to grear knowledge and progress as well as an understanding of truths but yourself are being religious about science if you believe it is the only way to understand all things true and real in existence (unless you can prove that of course).
This childish fight of science vs religion is silly. They are nor mutually exclusive and to both pursuits there is nothing more important than being correct.
I went out of the way to describe how they are not mutually exclusive. Religion helps you understand and realize truths that you may or may not be able to do so with science. It isn't religion that trumps science it is experience. Of course you will still manage to misconstruct this as something beneficial to your agenda that science is the enemy of religion.
If science claimed the earth is flat (which it did for the record in the past) and you built a baloon that lets you go high enough to witness the spherical and rotating nature of the earth. If you can't get others back up to that height to witness what you witnessed then should any other argument convince you to disbelieve what you saw and measured first hand? That is essentially what you are asking. In your world, others would come up with theories to explain why you saw what you saw and because they are smarter than you and there is popular consensus you should explain away what you saw to conform to their consensus. I am saying that is silly and in fact any viable argument would need to involve a similar level of experience as in perhaps going higher up the atmosphere and demonstrate the exact principles that make the flat earth look round or something. Mere hypothesis and theories don't trump experience is what I said (for the record I am not a flat earther lol). Only an experiment that experientially and reproducably demonstrates your argument can trump a belief gained by experience.
Any time someone challenges popular consensus ideas about science you come out with the pitchforks. I guess what they say about becoming what you hate is true. Popular science is how religion has been in the past, it really is a control and power system either way that helps the rulers maintain their grasp be it science or religion when abused this way.
I am not asking anything. For the record, I don’t think there is anything wrong with being a spiritual person or adhering to a religion.
However, to hijack your flat earth example, it was the dogmatic, institutionalised religion which kept that world view alive for so long in the face of contradicting evidence.
That is why religion (the institution) is inherently a tool of stagnation, repression and regression. While science (the institution) can at times seem that way as well, the scientific method is ultimately the tool of progress that has built the modern world we live in.
Perhaps one could argue that religion fills a different need in our societies, but still, I don’t think it is ultimately necessary for the moral, ethical and judicial development of our societies, either.
I think that I can help clarify badrabbit's point.
There are some who believe that there is only the physical universe of matter, and there are some who believe that there is not only the physical universe of matter but also a non-physical universe.
The non-physical universe is similar to ours in that there are thinking and feeling beings doing things in time and space but lack the property of matter.
Some people have closed their minds to the possibility of a non-physical reality because people who study physical reality have merely proclaimed that a non-physical reality doesn't exist.
Institutions of higher education such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton where formed by people who understood that there existed both a physical an non-physical reality and they wanted to educate everyone to have a deeper understanding of both.
Many great scientist held both views.
Robert Boyle 1627 – 1691.
Said that a deeper understanding of science was a higher glorification of God. Defined elements, compounds, and mixtures. Discovered the first gas law – Boyle’s Law.
Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783.
The son of a Calvinist pastor. Wrote religious texts and is commemorated by the Lutheran Church on their Calendar of Saints. Published more mathematics than any other single mathematician in history, much of it brilliant and groundbreaking.
Arthur Compton 1892 – 1962.
A deacon in the Baptist Church. Discovered that light can behave as a particle as well as a wave, and coined the word photon to describe a particle of light.
Bernhard Riemann 1826 – 1866.
Son of a Lutheran pastor. A devout Christian who died reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Transformed geometry providing the foundation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity; the Riemann hypothesis has become the most famous unresolved problem in mathematics.
Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662.
A Roman Catholic theologian. Pascal’s wager justifies belief in God. Devised Pascal’s triangle for the binomial coefficients and co-founded probability theory. Invented the hydraulic press and the mechanical calculator.
And the list goes on and on.
You are free to close your mind. Perhaps one could argue that closed minded people fill a different need in our societies, but I wouldn't.
What people in science are saying is...show me the evidence. Where is the evidence of a non-physical world? Scientists are theoretically not close-minded about it. They just want you to prove what you say.
It's like saying you can fly. OK, show me. Then you say, "Oh, I don't want to show you, just have faith."
>Institutions of higher education such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton where formed by people who understood that there existed both a physical an non-physical reality and they wanted to educate everyone to have a deeper understanding of both.
Harvard University was formed in 1636, when the could still burn you at the stake for being a witch. Or at least "tsk" you real hard. So there's that.
They had zero idea about what we now know today. It's hardly comparable.
Listing of scientists who think as you do is not meaningful in the slightest. I can give you a long list of those who think the other way.
>You are free to close your mind. Perhaps one could argue that closed minded people fill a different need in our societies, but I wouldn't.
This just speaks volumes of your bias. Why used "close minded"? Are you close-minded about there NOT being a non-physical world? If so, then YOU are the one that is close minded, right? It's the inverse of what you say.
And furthermore, a non-physical world has to be impossible. This "non-physical" world still has to have something. If beings are there, then there has to be SOME kind of order, SOME kind of organized energy. Otherwise, how would it work if it is just chaos and there is no order? What is this non-physical stuff that has to be organized? Pure energy? That still has to be organized in some kind of way. If this is so, then there's no such thing as non physical. If there's something there, then there's something there. The best you can hope for is to say that we cannot measure it, but just because it can't be measured by us, does not mean it is non-physical. We can't see quarks or quantum wave fluctuations at all, so because we cannot see them with our eyes, does that mean they are not there? Our instrumentation does not allow us to measure planck time, either. Does that mean we know nothing about it and it is non-physical world? And why would the non-physical world be able to interact with the physical world, as apparantly happens with demons and gods and angels and et cetera, but the physical cannot interact with the non-physical, other than you saying it with no proof? And, if the non-physical interacts with the physical, then the non-physical has to interact with the physical and we could measure the non-physical indirectly, the same way that we measure quarks and shit. So therefore it is ultimately physical, or at least some kind of measurable entity, which we can then manipulate. The only way you can deny this is if you start making stuff up, saying, "Yeah, but the non-physical knows how to not be measured." Oh? What bible verse say that explicitly? And if that is your comeback, then hypothetically, if we were to somehow measure and control every single atom in the world, then at no time would a non-physical entity be able to interact with us as we would know.
Here is the thing, religion did not tell people the earth is flat. There are thousands od religions with different views. You are probably talking about a west european context, the catholic church as an organizarion did a lot of bad things and held incorrect views, however, round or flat the debate was not science vs religion but mainstream false beliefs vs correct new beliefs between two parties that were very mich both religious at the time. Matter of fact they used the same reasoning as you are where as you now believe anything not conforming to the scientific community's consesus on a topic is a fringe crazy/stupid idea unless of course it happens to be blessed by the right academics (or back in the day church officials).
Isaac newton and galileo who were very religious would disagree with religion being a tool of stagnation. Established systems of power and control prefer stagnation and resist change. Religion, science and politics all alike. It is a human issue and thinking only religion is affected is silly in my opinion.
To your last sentence, morality, justice and ethics like science/knowledge need to be correct. Progression or regression is the means, the end of being correct trumps it all. Your statement is categorically wrong because of your generalized dismissal. Thousands of religions with opposing views wand you judges them all. It is as a incorrect as saying "science only does good and anything else is wrong" because it is too general, are we talking nuke bombs or vaccines, big difference. Are you talking about Islam, Christianity or some guy's cult religion, believe it or not there are differences.
I feel like there is a lot to discuss here, in a rational discussion. I am going to go line-by-ine and examine what you are saying.
I don't know if you will want this rational discussion or will be angry that I disagree with you, but I guess that's on you. I'm just presenting it in a neutral non-argumentative manner.
>Why people believe things and their reasoning process varies wildly.
First, it depends on how you are defining "believing". And reasoning...one has to pick apart someone's reasoning. A person can't just say that their reasoning is ok, just because they say it. What one person calls reasoning might be incorrect.
>religion is not a product of an intellectual excercise
I agree with this.
>but of experience
Experiences are subjective. Just because someone has an experience, doesn't make it a fact. It's just an experience.
>that was a product of faith.
Faith is meaningless if not based upon facts. A five-year-old might have faith in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but just because they have faith in it, doesn't make it real. Where is the evidence for a Santa Claus? Oh, the gifts that appear magically underneath the tree on Christmas Day? That's the evidence??? Sorry, no.
>What you are saying is if you presented me with an argument you believe to be factual,
Arguments are not factual. Facts are factual. And to be clear, if someone calls something a fact, doesn't mean it is. For example, Newtonian physics might have been called a fact at one time, but Einsteinian physics overlayed it. It's not that Newtonian physics were "wrong" per se but it is for the "macro" world rather than the atomic world. Newtonians were an approximation, whereas Einstein was a lot more exact. But could something replace Einstein's physics? Sure. But there would have to be a lot of work to see if that is the case, it just doesn't fall into one's lap.
Arguments are based on the best information that we have at the time. But nobody would ever say that they have all the facts, and that their argument is based on the best facts and evidence that they have at the time.
>even though you claim nothing is indisputable in your comment
Not sure what you are talking about here. I said that "Nothing is presented as unquestionable truth in science." This means if new information, facts, evidence is found, then how people see the world has to change to take these new facts and evidence into consideration.
>you still think your argument would overrule my experience which you do not share.
I think facts and evidence are facts and evidence. If your experience lines up with facts and evidence that exist in the world, then no problems. If your experience and faith is that a pegasus (winged horse) exists, then you are correct, I would not share that with you, unless you showed me a pegasus. Show me the evidence.
Your experience is personal and happens in your head. But it may or may not have anything to do with facts and evidence. If I said that I could fly, and that is my experience, would you accept what I said? Or would you ask me to prove it by flying? You would want evidence, of course. Anyone would ask me to fly to prove it. That's what happens when someone makes some kind of claim. They have to show evidence of it.
>You speak only from your perspective
No I don't. I speak from using the model of the Scientific Method. I didn't invent it. It is not MY perspective, it is the perspective of hundreds of millions of scientists, not just me. I'm just saying what it is. You can go on Wikipedia and learn about the Scientific Method. You will see in the very first diagram that it is a never-ending circle, meaning no end to finding new information, new evidence, meaning new models have to be created with new information.
>I agree that what you consider fact is never beyond dispute
I'm not sure what you are saying here. This is w...
Of course science and religion are mutually exclusive. You are just playing words games trying to invent another category of truth but there isn't one.
Plenty of scientists present their beliefs as the truth. Anybody who disagrees with them are idiots and conspiracy theorists. The flat earth theory is a common one where you will get that reaction.
Your reaction to religion is just a dumb take. Pretty much every religion has a concept of development of doctrine.
Scientists may, but so what? They are wrong. The Scientific Method, that concept is what matters. You can read about it in Wikipedia.
>Anybody who disagrees with them are idiots and conspiracy theorists.
It just depends, too. If someone says that there are fairies or pixies that exist, or that Pegasus exists, then that is pretty much an idiot, for all intents and purposes.
If someone says 2+2 does not equal 4, then whatever. Indiana had a bill in 1897 called the Indiana Pi Bill for bill #246. They tried to establish math by fiat, and said that a circle can be turned into a square. So yeah, the Indiana legislators were pretty bad.
>The flat earth theory is a common one where you will get that reaction.
So...I don't get what you are saying? Are you saying that the earth is flat??? Because that would be extremely bizarre to say that.
>Your reaction to religion is just a dumb take
It's a free country, you have the right to think whatever you wish.
>Pretty much every religion has a concept of development of doctrine.
Sure. The whole Santa Claus thing has a doctrine, too. The story of Santa Claus and the raindeer and how it came to be.
> Scientists may, but so what? They are wrong. The Scientific Method, that concept is what matters. You can read about it in Wikipedia.
I brought it up because you said:
>Nothing is presented as unquestionable truth in science. It is the predominent model. Just because some people might seem present it as TRUTH, doesn't mean that any scientist actually thinks that it is.
Many scientists do think their current views are the truth, not a compelling theory. You are wrong to suggest that scientists don't do this.
>It just depends, too. If someone says that there are fairies or pixies that exist, or that Pegasus exists, then that is pretty much an idiot, for all intents and purposes
You can't have it both ways. If a scientist says there are no fairies then according to you it is not the truth, but a model or theory. No scientists could possibly come to the conclusion that it is anything other than just a theory.
If I believe in a theory that hasn't been disproven like fairies then calling me an idiot would be wrong. According to you, I am making no more of a truthful statement than a scientist who says there are no fairies.
>So...I don't get what you are saying? Are you saying that the earth is flat??? Because that would be extremely bizarre to say that.
Of course I am not saying that. I am saying there are certain things in science we can say are true. We don't need to have competing theories. The Earth not being flat is one of them. If a scientist says the Earth is not flat and anybody who disagrees is an idiot and wrong, that is perfectly fine.
> If a scientist says there are no fairies then according to you it is not the truth, but a model or theory
Technically, that's true - our model of universe requires no fairies to exist so we have to assume they don't (otherwise where do we stop - everything imaginable has just as much likelihood of also existing).
If an actual fairy is discovered tomorrow and passes all reasonable scientific standards of evidence, the model was wrong and what we reasonably held to be "true" turns out not to be. Only a bad scientist would go on maintaining their previous "truth" when the evidence contradicts it (and the gold standard would be that a new model of the universe that includes fairies is able to make better predictions than the previous one).
This is why I didn't use a fairy example originally. I used flat earth since we can figure out the truth. The universe is huge so there obviously could be a fairy somewhere.
According to the person I was responding to we can't even know if the statement the earth is flat is truthful.
Depends on your standards for "truth". We can never be 100% sure that the Earth isn't in fact flat after all (and everything we measure/perceive is explained by mass delusion, for example), but we can certain enough that for all practical purposes there's no reason not to assume it's not true.
>According to the person I was responding to we can't even know if the statement the earth is flat is truthful.
Yes, that is 100% correct. We cannot know for 100% sure. However, we can assign degrees of certainty, which is the main thing that you are leaving out.
We can be 99.9999999999999999999999999999% certain that the world is flat. And we can know that there is a .0000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that the moon is made of green cheese (of course the top layer is rocky because of all the meteor strikes over the eons of time).
At some point, one can make a judgement call and say that 100% for sure that the earth is round and not flat, but that is only a figure of speech, strictly speaking, when looking at the world from a scientific viewpoint.
Only religion says that stuff is 100% true for all time. Definitively. Only religion.
>Many scientists do think their current views are the truth, not a compelling theory. You are wrong to suggest that scientists don't do this.
Many might. So what? This is meaningless. So what if one or one hundred or one hundred thousand scientists think it as truth? I doubt it is that way - all scientists know that what they think is the case, might not be so. For example, pretty much everyone "knows" the Big Bang happened 13.5 billion years ago. It's the truth, by most everyone. I think it is true. HOWEVER, if it is shown to be not true, I will change my mind. That's the point. While I say it is the truth, I also know that it can be proved wrong at any time. It's kind of a semantic difference, that when a scientist says something is the "truth", implicit in that statement is "unless it is shown NOT to be the truth."
Any actual scientist will change their views instantly when shown that they are wrong. Every physicist changed their minds instantly when they saw Einstein's discoveries. But I've also read that a few physicists to disagree with him and said he was wrong. So what? What some scientists say is irrelevant. It's the Scietific Method that is important.
Now, on the other hand, a religious person will almost NEVER change their views when presented with evidence, because they are the ones who think that they have the 100% truth, all the time, no matter what, no matter what evidence. It's what religion is, there is nothing new in what I say, everyone knows it.
>You can't have it both ways. If a scientist says there are no fairies then according to you it is not the truth, but a model or theory. No scientists could possibly come to the conclusion that it is anything other than just a theory.
I'm not quite sure what you are saying. It actually IS a theory that there are no fairies. But the thing is, is that all theories are not equal. Saying that the model or theory of there being fairies is such a crazy thing that one can safely say that there's no chance. I don't know if you are familiar with calculus, and limits. Limits are basically show that as you have some kind of function that gets closer to zero, let's say, you will get closer and closer to zero, but never actually reach it. But limits in calculus basically say, "Fuck it, it's zero." This is not me saying it.
So the point being is that I'm saying that the chance of fairies existing are .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. But if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong.
But you can't just say that there being fairies is equivalent to the model of germ theory and because germ theory is a model just like "fairy model" that they are the same at 50%/50% as being equally likely, just because they are both called "models."
I think a lot of it is that non-scientists really don't have a good grasp of what the field is about and the meanings. For example, a lot of christians will say that "evolution is only a theory" but use the word "theory" is more akin to the scientific word "hypothesis", and therefore will say that creationism, or "intellegent design" is also a theory, so they are both equivalent. But they are not. Evolution is 99.999999% proven by evidence, while "intelligent design" is .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of it being reality, and there is zero actual evidence of "intelligent design." Yet the proponents of "intelligent design" say that they are both "theories" and therefore must both be equivalent. But they are not. That being said, if a christian showed as much evidence of it being true as scietific evolution, I'd change my mind.
>If I believe in a theory that hasn't been disproven like fairies then calling me an idiot would be wrong. According to you, I am making no more of a t...
> Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant ones. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”
The paper's title:
"Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field" a play on the pop band Panic! at the Disco
> Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say.
27 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 69.6 ms ] threadThis sounds like "I can show anything is true assuming I can set the necessary conditions as I please".
Don't those Fools know that the the Earth is the very centre of the Universe and that all things (including the sun) revolve around it?
'Tis Madness I tell thee... Prepare the Dipping chairs and Pitchforks.
<< /me gets some popcorn >>
Wrong. Nothing is presented as unquestionable truth in science. It is the predominent model. Just because some people might seem present it as TRUTH, doesn't mean that any scientist actually thinks that it is. Or, put another way, if shown a better model, scientists will instantly change their views to the newer better model.
The only place one can find TRUTH, never changing TRUTH, is in religion. You are never able to change someone's religious worldview with new facts. Shit, Jesus christ himself could come back to earth, and if he said that christians got it all wrong, the christians would hang him on the cross again - how dare Jesus fluck with their beliefs?
One is it is kind of a metaphor for how religious people seem to think about "truth." They think that they have the one truth, the only truth, as ordained by their spirit entity, like Zeus, Ishtar, Ra, or JHWH (the christian god). That their "truth" is the answer to everything. Like in the christian god-entity, people can walk on water or bring dead people back to life. That's part of the TRUTH. Personally, I prefer to use the words "facts" and "evidence" rather than the world "truth", because truth is a very generalized and abstracted concept that can have many meanings and make conversations muddy. If one is saying 1+1 = 2 is truth, and use the word that way, then ok. But usually that is not how the word is used. It's kind of an amorphous term.
Also, it kind of makes me chuckle to write it that way because if you see religious people write or comment, they always use all-caps when they write, in the weirdest ways. So it is mimic of them to some extent. Not just on that word, but all kinds of random words in all-caps.
It makes no sense to argue with rules limiting your reasoning and operation to a scientific process when speaking to a person who does not share those same restrictions. Science does lead to grear knowledge and progress as well as an understanding of truths but yourself are being religious about science if you believe it is the only way to understand all things true and real in existence (unless you can prove that of course).
This childish fight of science vs religion is silly. They are nor mutually exclusive and to both pursuits there is nothing more important than being correct.
I went out of the way to describe how they are not mutually exclusive. Religion helps you understand and realize truths that you may or may not be able to do so with science. It isn't religion that trumps science it is experience. Of course you will still manage to misconstruct this as something beneficial to your agenda that science is the enemy of religion.
If science claimed the earth is flat (which it did for the record in the past) and you built a baloon that lets you go high enough to witness the spherical and rotating nature of the earth. If you can't get others back up to that height to witness what you witnessed then should any other argument convince you to disbelieve what you saw and measured first hand? That is essentially what you are asking. In your world, others would come up with theories to explain why you saw what you saw and because they are smarter than you and there is popular consensus you should explain away what you saw to conform to their consensus. I am saying that is silly and in fact any viable argument would need to involve a similar level of experience as in perhaps going higher up the atmosphere and demonstrate the exact principles that make the flat earth look round or something. Mere hypothesis and theories don't trump experience is what I said (for the record I am not a flat earther lol). Only an experiment that experientially and reproducably demonstrates your argument can trump a belief gained by experience.
Any time someone challenges popular consensus ideas about science you come out with the pitchforks. I guess what they say about becoming what you hate is true. Popular science is how religion has been in the past, it really is a control and power system either way that helps the rulers maintain their grasp be it science or religion when abused this way.
However, to hijack your flat earth example, it was the dogmatic, institutionalised religion which kept that world view alive for so long in the face of contradicting evidence.
That is why religion (the institution) is inherently a tool of stagnation, repression and regression. While science (the institution) can at times seem that way as well, the scientific method is ultimately the tool of progress that has built the modern world we live in.
Perhaps one could argue that religion fills a different need in our societies, but still, I don’t think it is ultimately necessary for the moral, ethical and judicial development of our societies, either.
There are some who believe that there is only the physical universe of matter, and there are some who believe that there is not only the physical universe of matter but also a non-physical universe.
The non-physical universe is similar to ours in that there are thinking and feeling beings doing things in time and space but lack the property of matter.
Some people have closed their minds to the possibility of a non-physical reality because people who study physical reality have merely proclaimed that a non-physical reality doesn't exist.
Institutions of higher education such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton where formed by people who understood that there existed both a physical an non-physical reality and they wanted to educate everyone to have a deeper understanding of both.
Many great scientist held both views.
Robert Boyle 1627 – 1691. Said that a deeper understanding of science was a higher glorification of God. Defined elements, compounds, and mixtures. Discovered the first gas law – Boyle’s Law.
Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783. The son of a Calvinist pastor. Wrote religious texts and is commemorated by the Lutheran Church on their Calendar of Saints. Published more mathematics than any other single mathematician in history, much of it brilliant and groundbreaking.
Arthur Compton 1892 – 1962. A deacon in the Baptist Church. Discovered that light can behave as a particle as well as a wave, and coined the word photon to describe a particle of light.
Bernhard Riemann 1826 – 1866. Son of a Lutheran pastor. A devout Christian who died reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Transformed geometry providing the foundation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity; the Riemann hypothesis has become the most famous unresolved problem in mathematics.
Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662. A Roman Catholic theologian. Pascal’s wager justifies belief in God. Devised Pascal’s triangle for the binomial coefficients and co-founded probability theory. Invented the hydraulic press and the mechanical calculator.
And the list goes on and on.
You are free to close your mind. Perhaps one could argue that closed minded people fill a different need in our societies, but I wouldn't.
It's like saying you can fly. OK, show me. Then you say, "Oh, I don't want to show you, just have faith."
>Institutions of higher education such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton where formed by people who understood that there existed both a physical an non-physical reality and they wanted to educate everyone to have a deeper understanding of both.
Harvard University was formed in 1636, when the could still burn you at the stake for being a witch. Or at least "tsk" you real hard. So there's that.
They had zero idea about what we now know today. It's hardly comparable.
Listing of scientists who think as you do is not meaningful in the slightest. I can give you a long list of those who think the other way.
>You are free to close your mind. Perhaps one could argue that closed minded people fill a different need in our societies, but I wouldn't.
This just speaks volumes of your bias. Why used "close minded"? Are you close-minded about there NOT being a non-physical world? If so, then YOU are the one that is close minded, right? It's the inverse of what you say.
And furthermore, a non-physical world has to be impossible. This "non-physical" world still has to have something. If beings are there, then there has to be SOME kind of order, SOME kind of organized energy. Otherwise, how would it work if it is just chaos and there is no order? What is this non-physical stuff that has to be organized? Pure energy? That still has to be organized in some kind of way. If this is so, then there's no such thing as non physical. If there's something there, then there's something there. The best you can hope for is to say that we cannot measure it, but just because it can't be measured by us, does not mean it is non-physical. We can't see quarks or quantum wave fluctuations at all, so because we cannot see them with our eyes, does that mean they are not there? Our instrumentation does not allow us to measure planck time, either. Does that mean we know nothing about it and it is non-physical world? And why would the non-physical world be able to interact with the physical world, as apparantly happens with demons and gods and angels and et cetera, but the physical cannot interact with the non-physical, other than you saying it with no proof? And, if the non-physical interacts with the physical, then the non-physical has to interact with the physical and we could measure the non-physical indirectly, the same way that we measure quarks and shit. So therefore it is ultimately physical, or at least some kind of measurable entity, which we can then manipulate. The only way you can deny this is if you start making stuff up, saying, "Yeah, but the non-physical knows how to not be measured." Oh? What bible verse say that explicitly? And if that is your comeback, then hypothetically, if we were to somehow measure and control every single atom in the world, then at no time would a non-physical entity be able to interact with us as we would know.
Isaac newton and galileo who were very religious would disagree with religion being a tool of stagnation. Established systems of power and control prefer stagnation and resist change. Religion, science and politics all alike. It is a human issue and thinking only religion is affected is silly in my opinion.
To your last sentence, morality, justice and ethics like science/knowledge need to be correct. Progression or regression is the means, the end of being correct trumps it all. Your statement is categorically wrong because of your generalized dismissal. Thousands of religions with opposing views wand you judges them all. It is as a incorrect as saying "science only does good and anything else is wrong" because it is too general, are we talking nuke bombs or vaccines, big difference. Are you talking about Islam, Christianity or some guy's cult religion, believe it or not there are differences.
I don't know if you will want this rational discussion or will be angry that I disagree with you, but I guess that's on you. I'm just presenting it in a neutral non-argumentative manner.
>Why people believe things and their reasoning process varies wildly.
First, it depends on how you are defining "believing". And reasoning...one has to pick apart someone's reasoning. A person can't just say that their reasoning is ok, just because they say it. What one person calls reasoning might be incorrect.
>religion is not a product of an intellectual excercise
I agree with this.
>but of experience
Experiences are subjective. Just because someone has an experience, doesn't make it a fact. It's just an experience.
>that was a product of faith.
Faith is meaningless if not based upon facts. A five-year-old might have faith in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but just because they have faith in it, doesn't make it real. Where is the evidence for a Santa Claus? Oh, the gifts that appear magically underneath the tree on Christmas Day? That's the evidence??? Sorry, no.
>What you are saying is if you presented me with an argument you believe to be factual,
Arguments are not factual. Facts are factual. And to be clear, if someone calls something a fact, doesn't mean it is. For example, Newtonian physics might have been called a fact at one time, but Einsteinian physics overlayed it. It's not that Newtonian physics were "wrong" per se but it is for the "macro" world rather than the atomic world. Newtonians were an approximation, whereas Einstein was a lot more exact. But could something replace Einstein's physics? Sure. But there would have to be a lot of work to see if that is the case, it just doesn't fall into one's lap.
Arguments are based on the best information that we have at the time. But nobody would ever say that they have all the facts, and that their argument is based on the best facts and evidence that they have at the time.
>even though you claim nothing is indisputable in your comment
Not sure what you are talking about here. I said that "Nothing is presented as unquestionable truth in science." This means if new information, facts, evidence is found, then how people see the world has to change to take these new facts and evidence into consideration.
>you still think your argument would overrule my experience which you do not share.
I think facts and evidence are facts and evidence. If your experience lines up with facts and evidence that exist in the world, then no problems. If your experience and faith is that a pegasus (winged horse) exists, then you are correct, I would not share that with you, unless you showed me a pegasus. Show me the evidence.
Your experience is personal and happens in your head. But it may or may not have anything to do with facts and evidence. If I said that I could fly, and that is my experience, would you accept what I said? Or would you ask me to prove it by flying? You would want evidence, of course. Anyone would ask me to fly to prove it. That's what happens when someone makes some kind of claim. They have to show evidence of it.
>You speak only from your perspective
No I don't. I speak from using the model of the Scientific Method. I didn't invent it. It is not MY perspective, it is the perspective of hundreds of millions of scientists, not just me. I'm just saying what it is. You can go on Wikipedia and learn about the Scientific Method. You will see in the very first diagram that it is a never-ending circle, meaning no end to finding new information, new evidence, meaning new models have to be created with new information.
>I agree that what you consider fact is never beyond dispute
I'm not sure what you are saying here. This is w...
Your reaction to religion is just a dumb take. Pretty much every religion has a concept of development of doctrine.
>Anybody who disagrees with them are idiots and conspiracy theorists.
It just depends, too. If someone says that there are fairies or pixies that exist, or that Pegasus exists, then that is pretty much an idiot, for all intents and purposes.
If someone says 2+2 does not equal 4, then whatever. Indiana had a bill in 1897 called the Indiana Pi Bill for bill #246. They tried to establish math by fiat, and said that a circle can be turned into a square. So yeah, the Indiana legislators were pretty bad.
>The flat earth theory is a common one where you will get that reaction.
So...I don't get what you are saying? Are you saying that the earth is flat??? Because that would be extremely bizarre to say that.
>Your reaction to religion is just a dumb take
It's a free country, you have the right to think whatever you wish.
>Pretty much every religion has a concept of development of doctrine.
Sure. The whole Santa Claus thing has a doctrine, too. The story of Santa Claus and the raindeer and how it came to be.
I brought it up because you said:
>Nothing is presented as unquestionable truth in science. It is the predominent model. Just because some people might seem present it as TRUTH, doesn't mean that any scientist actually thinks that it is.
Many scientists do think their current views are the truth, not a compelling theory. You are wrong to suggest that scientists don't do this.
>It just depends, too. If someone says that there are fairies or pixies that exist, or that Pegasus exists, then that is pretty much an idiot, for all intents and purposes
You can't have it both ways. If a scientist says there are no fairies then according to you it is not the truth, but a model or theory. No scientists could possibly come to the conclusion that it is anything other than just a theory.
If I believe in a theory that hasn't been disproven like fairies then calling me an idiot would be wrong. According to you, I am making no more of a truthful statement than a scientist who says there are no fairies.
>So...I don't get what you are saying? Are you saying that the earth is flat??? Because that would be extremely bizarre to say that.
Of course I am not saying that. I am saying there are certain things in science we can say are true. We don't need to have competing theories. The Earth not being flat is one of them. If a scientist says the Earth is not flat and anybody who disagrees is an idiot and wrong, that is perfectly fine.
Technically, that's true - our model of universe requires no fairies to exist so we have to assume they don't (otherwise where do we stop - everything imaginable has just as much likelihood of also existing).
If an actual fairy is discovered tomorrow and passes all reasonable scientific standards of evidence, the model was wrong and what we reasonably held to be "true" turns out not to be. Only a bad scientist would go on maintaining their previous "truth" when the evidence contradicts it (and the gold standard would be that a new model of the universe that includes fairies is able to make better predictions than the previous one).
According to the person I was responding to we can't even know if the statement the earth is flat is truthful.
Yes, that is 100% correct. We cannot know for 100% sure. However, we can assign degrees of certainty, which is the main thing that you are leaving out.
We can be 99.9999999999999999999999999999% certain that the world is flat. And we can know that there is a .0000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that the moon is made of green cheese (of course the top layer is rocky because of all the meteor strikes over the eons of time).
At some point, one can make a judgement call and say that 100% for sure that the earth is round and not flat, but that is only a figure of speech, strictly speaking, when looking at the world from a scientific viewpoint.
Only religion says that stuff is 100% true for all time. Definitively. Only religion.
Many might. So what? This is meaningless. So what if one or one hundred or one hundred thousand scientists think it as truth? I doubt it is that way - all scientists know that what they think is the case, might not be so. For example, pretty much everyone "knows" the Big Bang happened 13.5 billion years ago. It's the truth, by most everyone. I think it is true. HOWEVER, if it is shown to be not true, I will change my mind. That's the point. While I say it is the truth, I also know that it can be proved wrong at any time. It's kind of a semantic difference, that when a scientist says something is the "truth", implicit in that statement is "unless it is shown NOT to be the truth."
Any actual scientist will change their views instantly when shown that they are wrong. Every physicist changed their minds instantly when they saw Einstein's discoveries. But I've also read that a few physicists to disagree with him and said he was wrong. So what? What some scientists say is irrelevant. It's the Scietific Method that is important.
Now, on the other hand, a religious person will almost NEVER change their views when presented with evidence, because they are the ones who think that they have the 100% truth, all the time, no matter what, no matter what evidence. It's what religion is, there is nothing new in what I say, everyone knows it.
>You can't have it both ways. If a scientist says there are no fairies then according to you it is not the truth, but a model or theory. No scientists could possibly come to the conclusion that it is anything other than just a theory.
I'm not quite sure what you are saying. It actually IS a theory that there are no fairies. But the thing is, is that all theories are not equal. Saying that the model or theory of there being fairies is such a crazy thing that one can safely say that there's no chance. I don't know if you are familiar with calculus, and limits. Limits are basically show that as you have some kind of function that gets closer to zero, let's say, you will get closer and closer to zero, but never actually reach it. But limits in calculus basically say, "Fuck it, it's zero." This is not me saying it.
So the point being is that I'm saying that the chance of fairies existing are .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. But if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong.
But you can't just say that there being fairies is equivalent to the model of germ theory and because germ theory is a model just like "fairy model" that they are the same at 50%/50% as being equally likely, just because they are both called "models."
I think a lot of it is that non-scientists really don't have a good grasp of what the field is about and the meanings. For example, a lot of christians will say that "evolution is only a theory" but use the word "theory" is more akin to the scientific word "hypothesis", and therefore will say that creationism, or "intellegent design" is also a theory, so they are both equivalent. But they are not. Evolution is 99.999999% proven by evidence, while "intelligent design" is .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of it being reality, and there is zero actual evidence of "intelligent design." Yet the proponents of "intelligent design" say that they are both "theories" and therefore must both be equivalent. But they are not. That being said, if a christian showed as much evidence of it being true as scietific evolution, I'd change my mind.
>If I believe in a theory that hasn't been disproven like fairies then calling me an idiot would be wrong. According to you, I am making no more of a t...
The paper's title:
"Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field" a play on the pop band Panic! at the Disco
> Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say.
Because they don't.