Fail and Fraud
Posted on 09/07/2011 5:41:07 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
"I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," GOP presidential hopeful and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman recently tweeted. You've got to hand it to Huntsman - he sure knows how to endear himself to folks who won't vote in the Republican primary.
Huntsman has said that he fears that the GOP will be perceived as the "antiscience party." That is, he gave a nod to Democrats' conceit that theirs is the party of science. Why? Because the Dems don't tolerate questions about evolution or global warming.
As then-Delaware state climatologist David Legates told me in 2007, he would tell students who were not global-warming true believers, "If you don't have tenure at a major research university, keep your mouth shut."
Huntsman's reverential tone, however, suggests that university science departments are havens of harmony, with scientists as priest-like figures to whose greater wisdom the public should defer.
With scientists on this pedestal, who needs religion?
And as recent events have shown, not all scientists are above the political fray.
Consider Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist. In 2009, Chu's staff approved $535 million loan guarantee to the Fremont solar company, Solyndra. Within two years, despite half a billion in taxpayer dollars, Solyndra announced last week it was filing for bankruptcy, shuttering its remaining plant, and laying off 1,100 workers. That was one miscalculation. Mistakes happen.
But the biggest blunder was not made by a scientist, but by a politician who so trusted the hollow promises of the climate-change lobby that he bet the U.S. economy on green jobs that never did proliferate. That was President Obama, and you see the fruit of his misguided faith.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Fail and Fraud
How long until High Priest Algore demands we throw virgins into volcanos to appease Goddess Gaia?
Before Judaism and Christianity, these were called ‘witch doctors’? Am I right about this?
He knows all about women talking 'bout him eh.
Science is a worldview.
Religion is a worldview.
People who ascribe to a particular worldview tend to look at other worldviews and say “Mine’s better”.
In my experience, Believers usually have an ability to shrug and say, “We see things differently”, while Materialists expand upon the initial thought by saying, “Mine’s better — and you’re an idiot.”
Science is "principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses." In other words, it is a study of things that can be studied in the physical world.
Some "scientists" (more like adherents of "Scientisim") argue that because faith and religion (the incorporeal) cannot be proved or even studied using their method of studying the corporeal world, it must not exist. Yet "science" is not competent to speak about that which falls outside its area of study. If a scientist were truly focused on science, then, as a scientist, the furthest any scientist could go is agnosticism. "Hey, I'm a scientist and that's outside my field of study."
As soon as they make a positive statement about the metaphysical (e.g., there is no god), they are claiming competence in the metaphysical, which they, by definition, do not study. Because it cannot be based on study, their positive statements are based on faith. A negative faith, but faith nonetheless. They cannot use a method that only covers the corporeal universe to prove there is nothing incorporeal. To say otherwise is to be an adherent of Scientism, not science.
Greenhouse gas theory is settled and CO2 increases will cause some slight warming. Manmade CO2 releases cause most of the observed atmospheric CO2 increases. But that's as far as the science can go because weather controls climate, not vice versa, and the sun mostly controls weather and not greenhouse gases. The most likely case is that weather will attenuate greenhouse gas changes.
No - Lawyers are the new priests
To the Obots:
Che’ is dead get over it, AGW is dead get over it.
CERN experiment confirms cosmic ray action (The global warmists’ dam breaks) http://bit.ly/q5KdWL Confirms AGW fraud!
Nature, Journal of Science Discredits Man-made Global Warming http://bit.ly/oIekos “I think it is such a blatant falsification.”
They WANT to believe it.
It gives the politicians power,
and it gives the people a religion, some reason to matter.
“Scientism”
Hayek wrote a good little book about this problem way back in 1952- “ The Counter-Revolution of Science: studies in the abuse of reason”
Jon Huntsman can shove it. Yeah, he is crazy. He WORKED FOR HUSSEIN, didn’t he? What more proof is required?
“No - Lawyers are the new priests”
Lawyers are the same old devotees of Moloch as always - now in his current incarnation as the Progressive State.
Religion is a worldview.
Not exactly. Scientism is a world view. Science has to do with the physical world. It has nothing worth hearing about anything beyond that.
Metaphysics and the possibility of a spiritual world are beyond the competence of science.
Scientism is an abuse of science by freighting it with metaphysical baggage -- specifically, the assertion that nothing exists beyond the physical world and that the universe made itself.
True religion does not forbid science to exercise its proper function in its own sphere. I know an astrophysicist who's also a Jesuit priest. No contradiction.
Good explanation.
Science is simply an effective tool to explore and understand creation.
“Some “scientists” (more like adherents of “Scientisim”) argue that because faith and religion (the incorporeal) cannot be proved or even studied using their method of studying the corporeal world, it must not exist.”
And yet that very world (the pre-scientific) is what sustains them as scientists. You remove the words “number,” “consciousness,” “creativity, “beauty,” “reason,” etc. from the vocabulary (let alone the words soul, God, spirit, etc.) because these words can’t be reduced to a materialistic explanation and your are left with the dismal understanding that people are just bowls of chemical soup. There is nothing terribly human in that materialistic understanding but it is the human understanding of things that has given rise to the scientific and it is that human understanding that provides the rich pageantry of our humanity — that has the ability to sustain us — and which sustains the scientist so that he can do science. To dismiss this understanding is, as you say, an act of negative faith. But science today carries such weight and authority that it may be comparable to the power religion had in the past. Still, science is not infallible — like the Pope — and it changes periodically. That at least should provide some modesty.
Only when scientists say that what they say is not subject to debate or revision.
Only when scientists allow political considerations, power and money, to ‘buy salvation’.
Only when they become part and parcel of those established hierarchies that support the thrones of tyranny.
But in general no.
To much of the public a guy in a white coat has more authority about the physical world than a guy in a black robe - that drives some people absolutely bat-feces crazy.
I am a scientist and also a religious person. Both seek for truth, yet in different ways. The problem is that too many scientists abuse scientific method and cloud conclusions with personal adherence to theories and hypotheses, often due to having personally invested time or to sources of income. Some problems, like the earth’s climate, are so massive, involving so many variables, that the application of scientific method is unlikely to yield indisputable conclusions on a broad scale. If the application of experimentation and observation are unable to establish a hypothesis as true, it remains a hypothesis. True science calls hypotheses what they are and does not easily label them “truth”.
This is a very interesting subject, and I watched a video yesterday that touched on it. It’s on Youtube, a video by David Albert, professor of Philosophy and Physics at Columbia, and author of a couple books, one of which is “Quantum Mechanics and Experience” which I read years ago but lost...
Anyways, by the end of the video (a video in 3 parts) he speculates about what is the purpose of things. He says basically “What happens if/when we have a TOE (theory of everything) and I am able to use it to explain whatever - how a person voted, why they like a certain kind of food, whatever. WHAT THEN is the purpose of believing in something like a soul?
In a way, he’s answering his own question without realizing it.
If a theory of everything can explain everything, but they still don’t know the purpose of a soul, then the theory would seem to be deficient. The belief or actual existence of a soul would be by itself something that was OUTSIDE the bounds of a simple theory based on mechanics, no matter how complex those mechanics are.
Now on the surface here it sounds like we have a contradiction. But we know mathematically, that there are certain theorems that are simply unprovable. We know they are either right or wrong, but we also know that there is no way to prove which using mathematics.
I would ask a question along the lines of “Does that fact in some manner operate like religious faith? If we believe the theorem is right, does that somehow make it so, even though it is still unprovable through normal modes?”
Anyways it’s a very interesting subject. Parts of the universe are known. Parts are unknown. And some of the unknown is knowable. But some of the unknown, we can NEVER know. No matter what we do or believe.
Pinging all FR’s resident metaphysical experts!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
