• InputZero@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’ve met scientists who say God exists and the universe is billions of years old. Their perspective is definitely a bit different. They see themselves as discoverers of God’s work but their academic work was just as valid as their atheist colleagues. Most often they were the first to criticize their church and continued to believe. Blew my mind.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      Their academic work is only valid if it doesn’t incorporate their religion. Because faith has no value in science.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        7 months ago

        We pretty confident in the age of the Earth and have been pretty confident in its age for quite some time if you asked 20 scientists they will all give you pretty much the same answer. I don’t know where you’re getting this belief that the age of the Earth is in debate.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            7 months ago

            I cannot speak to the quality of the documentaries you’re watching since you don’t actually list them.

            But I can assure you we are extremely confident we know the age of the Earth. In fact we have known the age of the Earth with high confidence longer than we’ve known age of the universe that contains it.

            The ages of various life forms on the earth are much more nebulous but the age of the actual rock that makes the planet up, is known.

                  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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                    7 months ago

                    Oh well if you’re “pretty sure” then I won’t argue with you.

                    After all, you have a feeling on the subject. Don’t bother to look it up or anything. Remaining deliberately uninformed is so much more appealing doing a quick Google search.

      • ulterno@programming.dev
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        7 months ago

        then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?

        That’s the point of science. Humility and requestioning yourself everytime someone gives new input, instead of sticking to some old text that some human wrote and multiple other humans over a long period of time, translated; all using lossy translation techniques.

        This mentality is similar to what you will see from many people in places of power (no matter how small), trying to evade criticism using the same social power that they need to be responsible about. Just that in case of religion, one has found a scapegoat, so unassailable that it can be reused indefinitely.

        You can see, which approach is more desirable by simply considering the following facet of the result that we have when we have a science majority vs a religion majority…

        • In times when religious organisations were in power, those who criticised them were killed and their works destroyed to as much of an extent as possible
        • In times when scientific thought was prevalent (scientific organisations don’t get social power owing to their lack of charisma, which stems from the very basic attribute of the modern philosophy of science - that one can be wrong) the religious organisations criticising science are not destroyed until almost extinction, but are allowed to question all results and have the opportunity to aggregate their views.
          • You will always see some kind of religion vs another
          • You might see “science-ism” vs some other religion
          • You will see political orgs (which represent one of the peaks of social power in the current age) vs some politico-religional orgs trying to destroy and silence the other
          • You will not see science trying to silence a religion
          • You will see businessmen trying to use scientific results as a stepladder to social power. You will also see them fail in the long term, simply due to the nature of science.
          • ulterno@programming.dev
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            7 months ago

            I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.

            Yeah, that’s one of the pretty big problems I see happening in the current scenario.
            People becoming way more hand-wavy about having been proven wrong, which sometimes seems (we can’t know whether it actually is) outright disingenuous.

            The religion related scenario I painted was probably possible due to how long it lasted. Maybe we will have to wait for this one to last long enough to know whether what it yields is as undesirable or more.
            For now, at least I don’t see it going in the same direction as the religion power, simply because it’s not the science people that are holding power, but other politics oriented ones. So if it were to go in an undesirable direction in the far future, it would have to be in some other direction.

              • ulterno@programming.dev
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                7 months ago

                The science guys will always do science.
                Even if the patronages stop.
                Even if other’s start killing them for it.
                Even if the whole society calls them a heretic.
                The quest for truth defines them.


                Just don’t mistake them for science bros