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To: Coyoteman
What I will respond to, however, is science perverted by religion, and we see a lot of that on these threads.

The real question is: can science be perverted by atheism? Can or not?

146 posted on 10/14/2006 7:12:27 PM PDT by A. Pole (Russian proverb: "All are not cooks that walk with long knives")
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To: A. Pole
"The real question is: can science be perverted by atheism? Can or not?"

No!

If an atheistic scientist was to pervert the data, the model or the theory the theistic scientists, which outnumber the atheistic scientists would call him on his foolishness.

Science is very competitive and adversarial. Methodological naturalism requires that the data any scientist gathers, the calculations he makes (Biology makes heavy use of probability and statistics) and the logic behind conclusions made be available to other scientists in the same field. This means that any scientist who believes his pet project is more accurate than any other's, or is just skeptical, can critically analyze the other's work and find errors in methodology, data collection, calculations and conclusions which he/she is quite willing to publicly announce.

Even when papers are presented at symposia, questions following the presentation can be devastating to unprepared scientists.

A case in point is the claim made by NASA some years ago that a meteorite from Mars contained possible traces of life which was quite forcefully and publicly refuted by another group of scientists who had examined the same meteorite.

In the case of atheistic scientists trying to get one past other scientists, the chance of success given the number of theistic scientists, of all faiths, is just about nil.

Contrary to what most anti-evolutionists would like you to believe, there is no possible way for a conspiracy among the divergent belief systems of scientists to occur. Competition alone would prevent it.

155 posted on 10/14/2006 7:51:04 PM PDT by b_sharp (evolution is not, generally speaking, a global optimiser, but a general satisficer -J. Wilkins)
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