On 12 May 2005 at 15:21, Jeffrey Payton wrote:
> I don't entirely disagree with you, and I'm not trying to be
> argumentative, I'm just trying to understand, especially your last
> paragraph.

(The paragraph in question: Marcus wrote:
> "True believers", irrespective of what they believe in, are anti-
> intellectual by definition because the tenets of a true belief reject
> the notion of science implicitly where the rejection is not explicit.
> One cannot enjoy the freedom to explore other points of view or other
> explanations of pheneomena, by declaring up front that one abjures
> those freedoms together with any other point of view or
> explanation.)

> Science has it's laws, granted, but it is also about
> exploring different points of view, and other explanations of
> phenomena, etc. and assimilating those discoveries into its continuing
> basis of 'laws'. If it (science) stopped being about trying to
> understand things, then it would cease to be an 'intelligent' study ...<

Just so. When I said "One cannot enjoy the freedom to explore other
points of view or other explanations of pheneomena, by declaring up
front that one abjures those freedoms together with any other point
of view or explanation." I was referring to the way the "true
believers" declare up front that they abjure those freedoms and other
points of view. Science, I hold, is always open to an examination of
the evidence, but true believers, in my experience, are not.

On 12 May 2005 at 15:21, Jeffrey Payton wrote:
> I think, even if it rules out the theories that it rejects, due to
> lack of information, or some other reason. If the discoveries
> already made through science were definite and incontrovertible,
> would there be any room for growth? more theories? discoveries? In
> other words, (and here I agree with you and 'science' as a learning
> and discovery system) isn't intelligence (like science) really
> the thirst for knowledge, and the ability to assimilate new
> discoveries into an ongoing basic 'law' of science.<

Sure -- but that's also just what true believers reject. What true
believers hold is that there is no room for growth, no need for more
theories, and that all that needs to be learned or discovered is
contained in the holy writings or in the decisions of the authorites.
I was distinguishing science from true belief, and I hold that
science is not a species of belief, but rather a way to doubt and
hold as true, reasonably, without a need for "true belief".

> So, taking your argument on board, and reapplying it, I was just
> saying that 'definite non-belief' without leaving any possibilities
> open (like we agree that science DOES, in fact do) for any other
> explanation, seems, to me anyway, as illogical as 'true belief'
> because there doesn't seem to be enough information for a DEFINITE
> conclusion, either way. In other words, I don't think that science, by
> definition, really rules anything out.<

Science rules things out, or in, provisionally. The evidence mounts
one way or another, and the more evidence there is the more
reasonable it seems to continue to rule those things out, or in, and
the less provisional it is held to be, and the more confident
scientists are in taking it as demonstrated, and building more on
those things. But that sort of confidence is different from "true
belief" precisely because it is built on evidence and not on mere
belief -- and because that confidence remains provisional. If an
experiment shows that a scientific tenet is wrong, in whole or in
part, there is an immediate examination of the experiment AND the
tenet. People scrambled to look again at "cold fusion" when someone
claimed to have done it, even as they examined the experiment itself.
"What if they're right!?" was as exciting as "Why aren't they dead?"

> So, to ask another question, and in reference to a line in your last
> paragraph, wouldn't your statement make one 'anti-intellectual' if one
> were a 'true believer' in the established 'laws' of science, for
> instance? In your scenario, it would, wouldn't it? Would scientists
> turn into scientific Luddites? Maybe I'm just arguing semantics? Not
> sure...<

Sure, it's entirely possible that the majority of people are really
"true believers" in science, but that's not a sound critique of
science or of scientists because scientists, and those who hold the
scientific method to be a sound way of examing themselves and the
world around them, take care not to be true believers, but rather to
be reasonably skeptical. In the same way it's possible to believe in
God at church, and at three o'clock in the morning, and still be a
scientist at work. What consoles us emotionally is not necessarily
what guides us in our view of how the world works.

Marcus