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A Philosophical Thread about Good & Evil - Catastrophes, Coincidences & Theodicy

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malins said:
what's true is that "scientists" (being human individuals with irrational minds and neurotransmitter/hormone-driven reward systems, embedded in social hierarchies and status competitions) don't always rigorously apply the "scientific method" and of course the "scientific method" needs certain circumstances to work.

"Scientists" and groups of scientists can fall victim to all human failings as well as any other people, "scientist" is not some priest-like identity that sets someone apart or above from other humans.

And science can get discredited when it serves power or economic interests too much.

Or when producing enormous amounts of "studies", that are almost impossible to reproduce (and are often falsified when the attempt is made), so that "there is a study that confirms X" simply becomes a way to shut up opposition and support any political aim that happens to be connected enough to power, so that the studies confirming it have a chance to get financed.

Nevertheless if properly applied, a scientific approach as a way of weeding out wrong ideas still works pretty well ...
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And even if scientists were infallible, scientific 'truths' will always be provisional. Science can only give us is a collection of rules of thumb for predicting future events. There is no logically necessary connection between causes and effects. Scientists infer 'laws' from repeated experiments and observations, but we can never be absolutely certain that these 'laws' will hold good for future experiments.
 
Silent_Water said:
On the other hand, I know enough examples of "scientific beliefs" which were held up for a long time although they were wrong.
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That's the thing about science though ... fundamentally it is an institutionalised from of skepticism. There are no such things as 'Laws' of science ... only theories that are constantly being adapted and improved based on new verified evidence. The Scientific Method is skepticism refined ... scientists are not out to prove their Theory, they are out to prove the Null Hypothesis ... that is, that the Theory doesn't hold up.

And they do that within what many would consider hopelessly stringent levels of proof for the Null Hypothesis. In some science fields if there even a .05% (one twentieth of one percent) chance that the Null Hypothesis is correct then the Theory fails, or needs refinement.

And Theories are refined to the extent that the original Theories become hopelessly outdated. Once there was Galileo dropping items off the Tower of Pisa (and reaching fundamentally the wrong conclusions), then Newton took the matter in hand (and reached fundamentally the wrong conclusions) with Newtonian physics, then in another moment of brilliance Einsten proposed General and Special Relativity (and reached some wrong conclusions because of his contention that 'God don't play dice with the universe'), then Schmidt and Co observed that the expansion of the universe seemed to be accelerating, and scientists have gotten down to proposing dark energy and dark matter to explain why galaxies don't break apart whilst the expansion is accelerating.

And I don't want to even talk about the contributions quantum physics (and its attendant mathematics, fairy particles, multiple dimensions and almost complete lack of observable evidence) has made to this narrow field of physics ... because like many with only a

All were fundamentally talking about Gravity, and along the way our various theories of Gravity have been usefully refined by the 'exceptions to the rule' that each of these giants observed.

My points are:

1. Science is institutionalised skepticism.

2. Scientific Theories are usually wrong, but get refined into more workable and 'correct' versions as evidence accumulates for them

3. The Scientific Method is designed to ensure that this refinement occurs in a rational, verifiable, valid manner.

Which is way more than can be said for faith, superstition, 'from the gut' based opinions based on no particular evidence in particular.

That said, the politicians, geniuses and savants on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram seem to be the accepted sources of all knowledge and wisdom nowadays.

Which may be a good reason why the world generally is in such a stew.
 
Nostradamus: Och yoooh! (German saying which is for a rather unpleasant feeling.)
Nostradamus was a master in encoding his verses that you can read all or nothing from them and always declare after something happened that Nostradamus knew it before.
By the way, his son was a really failing "would-like-to-be-prophet" as far as I know because during one of the English-French wars, he predicted a big conflagration, which make a French city fall into the hands of the English besiegers. But the conflagration did not like to start by itself, so he helped a bit to burn, was caught with the torch in his hands and hanged.
 
FrankO said:
That's the thing about science though ... fundamentally it is an institutionalised from of skepticism. There are no such things as 'Laws' of science ... only theories that are constantly being
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If you try to formulate only a slightly sceptical thought in the current science at a current university, you will faster start a non-scientific career outside the academic world than you can write down this thought. They are very well-trained to stop any individual thinking. I lived so long there due to three reasons. First off all I was in a field which is very far from mainstream (and in the neighbouring field as chemist in physics). Secondly, my appearance is threightening for most people and thirdly I was able to organise money sources outside the scientific world, to pay off myself. Button even that last forever.
 
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Juan1234 said:
I know this thread has gone in a different direction, and I admit I haven't read most of it. But as someone who believes firmly in God (and probably don't belong here because of it) I just want to say this, and then I'll be quiet and let you continue your discussion:

Another solution to the paradox above is that although God takes no pleasure in human suffering, His ultimate goal is not simply to prevent it. Someone may argue this makes Him less than "good," but I would argue that, as a human, it is not my place to define "good"; humans have obviously failed miserably at coming to a consensus definition of "good." And if God is, in fact, omnipotent, He does not play by our rules and definitions; we must play by His.

Further, IF God's ultimate goal is to have a lover, a bride (as taught by Christianity), it makes sense that He does not simply use his power to legislate paradise, or legislate love. Because, as we all know intuitively, love is not love without a choice. Thus human suffering is the painful cost of His higher goal. (Again - if you or I don't feel that goal is "higher," I submit that as created beings, it is not our call.)

Obviously I'm not laying out a proof, but this is one solution to the paradox. It is what I believe.
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The idea of an objective moral order is meaningless unless there is an omnipotent and moral God to uphold it. A god who knowingly inflicts suffering on his creatures as a means of achieving his own ends is an immoral god. For example, mass murder of the first-born of Egypt in order to compel Pharaoh to allow Moses and the Hebrews to go free was no more 'moral' than the actions of modern terrorists.
 
montycrusto said:
He’s an actor and creationism-advocate who quote-mines and straw-mans scientists to make a (dishonest) point. Best avoided :doh:
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Dawkins is one of those soft-minded mainstream science protagonist (like the sex addict Lawrence Strauss (which I met, god help me), or the Science Guy, which is an engineering guy) which are way to overconfident. That is why he was talked into pieces by Ben Stein. It has to do with critical thinking, since all this non-mainstream researchers in the field of creationism, or say flat-earth theory who are moked all the time, learned that. They learned critical thinking the hard way. If you read the Major Sharpe novels (played marvellously by Sean Bean....) you know, that you would not attack him, even if you trained long time with a sword, he would just kick your ass. That is a similar situation. And I can therefor anyone which dares to confront say someone who is not for evolution theory (that one is a joke anyway, so you already know one!) or for the flat earth with your "school knowledge" you will hardly have any success. There are to many argumentative jumps in the field which were in your school career to have any chance, except you went really deep into it.
 
dfg42 said:
That is why he was talked into pieces by Ben Stein
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Sure.. Ben Stein is a genius, that’s why he had to lie about Darwin, and that’s why Dawkins fell into his trap (not because Dawkins had no idea what a liar he was dealing with!) :doh:
dfg42 said:
all this non-mainstream researchers in the field of creationism, or say flat-earth theory who are moked all the time,
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Don’t tell me you’re a flat-earther? Yes they are mocked all the time, I wonder why :p
 
montycrusto said:
Sure.. Ben Stein is a genius, that’s why he had to lie about Darwin, and that’s why Dawkins fell into his trap (not because Dawkins had no idea what a liar he was dealing with!) :doh:

Don’t tell me you’re a flat-earther? Yes they are mocked all the time, I wonder why :p
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Just try to prove that the earth is a globe and you will see the problem, I hope! For example using the Erasthotenes experiment.
 
Heineudo said:
Then I want to play the smart ass: The diameter of the earth at the equator is approx. 43 km larger than measured over the poles.
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Going for the 'Super smart ass of the day' trophy, I add to it that the south pole is a bit indented and that the southern hemisphere is a bit rounder than the northern, giving it a pear shape!:enamorado:

By the way, to go back too the original discussion ('coincidences') : 'many-worlds-theory'! Anyone!?:grazy:
 
dfg42 said:
How did you measure that?
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I learned in school many decades ago
Loxuru said:
Going for the 'Super smart ass of the day' trophy, I add to it that the south pole is a bit indented and that the southern hemisphere is a bit rounder than the northern, giving it a pear shape!
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And I'm happy to accept the trophy.
To get away from all these highly philosophical topics: This message is brand new
Record nuclear fusion achieved in China!
This really is a cause for celebration for experts worldwide. HL-2M Tokamak is ready for use and has now been put into operation, according to the Chinese state media. And the reactor managed a 10-second fusion from a standing start.
 
dfg42 said:
No joke, just try to convince, is to reproduce the arguments you learned in school and they are fishy.
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Wow ..a real live flat-earther.. I thought they were extinct, or in zoos. Um, with respect.. you do know how utterly crazy flat-Earth “theory” is? (It doesn’t even qualify as a theory). We can see the Earth is a globe dude you can fly round the damned thing... holy crap.. I don’t even know where to start. How do people fly across Antarctica without seeing the edge of the planet then? Or are they all part of a global conspiracy to hide the “truth”?

It’s exactly the same as if I announced that water isn’t wet. Oh you were taught at school that water is wet were you? Very fishy. Must be a conspiracy of NASA and the leftist science-whores trying to impose Wet-waterism on everybody. I respect you as a member of this forum ..but no way can I respect that.. :doh:
Like, at ALL.. :doh::doh::doh::doh::doh::doh:
 
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