To: Alacarte; Thatcherite
I'm reaaaally curious to hear you expound on this... You asked me to expound. :-)
You probably have experienced a great professor. The reason they are great is because they completely understand their subject and can convey it to their students by bridging topic specific language to concepts the students understand. Real life experience will demonstrate to you how much of an exception these people are. I understand the fact that vocabulary plays a big part in categorizing various scientific mechanisms and formula. But the good scientists don't purposefully hide behind the language.
You overlook the fact that "elite" scientists will formulate a model which is frequently incorrect. Like a Meteorologist who gets the forecast completely wrong, the nature of science is that the theories are often proven to be wrong. Science in the area of Evolution is an imperfect science.
You guys have the tendency to disregard anything that disagrees with your idea of truth. You fail to continue reading the potentially valuable information because you chalk it off as Creationoid. When a scientist that was formerly accepted as credible begins shifting their perspective toward Design theory, they are immediately labeled a quack. This method of investigation is typical of the left. "I have already made up my mind, don't confuse me with any new information or a different view. Anyone showing a hint of ID colors has discredited themselves."
Conservatives are willing to wade through the hogwash to get to some meat (In science, by its very method, this is the rule as opposed to the exception). Because conservatives -- and our Founding Fathers -- have the innate belief that, free from oppressive brainwashing, our brains actually function well.
Consider also the fact that highly specialized scientists are like a Fire Marshall. They lose site of a balanced perspective on their subject because they are to close to it. For scientists in the past, this was not the case. A Fire Marshall will demand that schools keep all of the doors closed, because it has been shown that closed doors are the single most effective safety feature regarding fires. So on the infinitesimal chance that a fire will occur, children are forced to sit in stale closed door classrooms across the country.
This overspecialization creates islands of knowledge that don't overlap, which creates a vacuum of overall scientific understanding. Like lawyers who have created a vocabulary to protect the application of law, scientists have created topic specific vocabulary that some use to protect their genre.
I am convinced, through personal experience, that scientists that really understand their subject, have no problem relating very complex ideas in plain English, transcribing topic specific vocabulary to relateable verbiage (I understand that interdepartmental use of specific language can save time when relating information between experts). A person who desires a more in-depth understanding of scientific topics can learn the vocabulary, sans the interpretations, in a short period of time.
Link
573 posted on
01/25/2005 10:25:41 AM PST by
bondserv
(Sincerity with God is the most powerful instigator for change! † [Check out my profile page])
To: bondserv
Ability to type meaningless irrelevant guff noted.
Complete failure to expound on your bizarre contention that quantum theory has not advanced for the last 150 years noted.
Continuing failure to name a single achievement of modern creation science noted.
Further repetition of fallacious "great dead scientists who were creationists" argument noted.
Continuing failure to correct errors on your profile page noted.
580 posted on
01/25/2005 11:04:25 AM PST by
Thatcherite
(Conservative and Biblical Literalist are not synonymous)
To: bondserv
From the link you gave:
1 - Most of the greatest scientists of the past 1000 years were Christians and creationists.
2 - To these scientists, Christianity was the driving force behind their discoveries.
3 - The Christian world view gave birth and impetus to modern science.
Response to 1: So... since many scientific discoveries from 200-1000 years ago were made by creationists, then science owes creationism something? Hardly a sound argument. They were all men too, does that mean women owe us something? Every serial killer and rapist from that period was a creationist too, why not brag on that?
The only thing all the scientists (and there were no scientists 500-1000 years ago) had in common was naturalistic methods. Without accepting supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, they were able to persevere and learn how things REALLY worked. Since we've discovered purely natural explanations for so much of the natural world already, without any help from supernatural conclusions, I think that point is sound.
Response to 2: If christianity were their driving force, then scientists would not throw away faith and rely on naturalism to find their answers... The whole point of faith is not to ask questions, and just accept everything as the way god wants it to be.
Response 3: How is this again? Today, the vast majority of top scientists deny the existence of a personal god, yet science is at it's pinnacle, and continues to increase on the same exponential function that it's been on for the last 400 years.
A person who desires a more in-depth understanding of scientific topics can learn the vocabulary, sans the interpretations, in a short period of time.
Absolutely false. Perhaps you can learn enough to understand what the experts say, but without formal education, you will NEVER understand well enough to draw your own conclusions. When I graduated from computer science and started my first job, the first thing I learned was that I knew nothing yet. All school had done was give me the foundation so that I could START learning on my own. School provided the theory and technical understanding to teach myself. Only after many years of experience did I feel comfortable with the vast sea of information and methods that I could contribute something based on my educated opinion. If something about computer science were a lie, trust me, us engineers would find it, cause stuff wouldn't work the way it should. Same way genetic engineers or medical researchers would discover serious errors in the current body of evolutionary science. People like this:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/FAE/fae.html
Note that Johns Hopkins is the best medical school in the US.
Creationists here who think you can read a Dembski book or browse a website for 2 days and suddenly understand why evolution is a lie are fools. If you had any inkling of how over your head a complex scientific field like biology is, you wouldn't even think of arguing from a scientific perspective.
Does this mean that you should just believe scientists? Of course not, I don't trust scientists either, they could be politically, or financially motivated. What I DO trust is the scientific method, the systems of peer review and publication that, by your own admission, work. You mention that many hypotheses are proven wrong, but how? It's not priests or pastors or IDers who discover the errors. The errors get fixed because they fail the test of the scientific method, maybe they got by the author for whatever reason, sloppiness or bias, but they likely won't get by his peers.
Trash scientists all you want, it's not their word that counts, it's what the scientific literature says, and it says overwhelmingly that evolution is true.
584 posted on
01/25/2005 11:13:34 AM PST by
Alacarte
(There is no knowledge that is not power)
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