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February 18, 2008 at 1:39pm
by Paul No.
Excellent article at the Bad Astronomy Blog (what else would you expect from Phil Plait, but an excellent article?) on the scientific method:
Science is not simply a database of knowledge. It’s a method, a way of finding this knowledge. Observe, hypothesize, predict, observe, revise. Science is provisional; it’s always open to improvement. Science is even subject to itself. If the method itself didn’t work, we’d see it. Our computers wouldn’t work (OK, bad example), our space probes wouldn’t get off the ground, our electronics wouldn’t work, our medicine wouldn’t work. Yet, all these things do in fact function, spectacularly well. Science is a check on itself, which is why it is such an astonishingly powerful way of understanding reality.
And that right there is where science and religion part ways. Science is not based on faith. Science is based on evidence. We have evidence it works, vast amounts of it, billions of individual pieces that fit together into a tapestry of reality. That is the critical difference. Faith, as it is interpreted by most religions, is not evidence-based, and is generally held tightly even despite evidence against it. In many cases, faith is even reinforced when evidence is found contrary to it.
Furthermore, the article contains a line which I will immortalize on my Favorite Quotes list, “it’s difficult to reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.”
[via Bad Astronomy Blog]
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