Beware, virtue signaling ahead!
Almost all, if not all, atheists are quite religious without realising it. They believe in scientism. Most of the things, in which they have 100% fate, were never proven by themselves.
That statement would outrage a lot of scientists myself included, but it's honestly true.
You've been told how gravity works, but have you really taken the time and effort to reproduce other scientists results and come to the same conclusion?
No. You were told how gravity works and you took their word for it. Doesn't mean the scientists are wrong, but it certainly means your conclusions are grounded only in faith.
Would instead say “your conclusions are grounded only in trust.”
I suppose, but imo the effect of blind trust and faith are quite similar.
BCH protocol & open source software are trusted bc anyone can check that they work at any time. It is not used on faith.
They can, but 99.9% of the time they don't. That's the problem.
Analogous to saying bc you dont grow your own food, you can’t trust it’s safe to eat. The incentives are properly aligned to reward good actors & punish bad actors.
Those that can find the exploits bc they understand it get rewarded for this effort. This is a job like any other.
It isnt a problem. There is financial incentive (that scales with the size of BCH market cap) for people to find exploits. As exploits are found they are fixed (making BCH stronger).
& 0.1% who check gravity is infinitely times more people who can and do check than those checking religious claims (eg heaven, reincarnation).
I mean, how many people do you need to keep measuring the acceleration due to gravity?
Given that there is large incentive to hack BCH protocol & steal funds and the fact that it hasn’t been done can be taken as proof the protocol works.
It might be counterproductive though. You hack it, steal a bunch, it crashes from the news, now what you stole is not worth much.
true, incentive is not equal to the market cap but is still many millions (10s of millions?) before people catch on. how many people check their crypto holdings (actual wallets) daily?
True. I would probably skip 5% off each wallet, assuming I could crack all the wallets. Maybe less. Might be awhile before it's noticed or figured out.
certainly, depends on what the attack/vulnerability is. & of course there have been times where trust is misplaced in untested wallets or other software & crypto were stolen.
similar to BCH. I (and most people) dont know cryptography but we trust the protocol & software bc it’s open source.
except you (or anyone) can always double check something you trust. no one can double check things taken on faith.
Wouldn’t consider this faith. Faith seems reserved for things that are impossible to test (what happens when you die). Not things that you personally haven’t tested.
Gravity (example in this thread) can be tested by anyone at any time, thus if you dont test it you trust scientists, you dont have faith in them.
Yes, science mostly makes testable predictions. Some (eg string theory) are not testable (at least now). These require faith and are more like religion.
>thinks constants are varying… >can’t look at the data himself?
Simply the fact that a person is standing in opposition to a large system doesn’t give their ideas any more or less credibility.
Religious belief: there's nothing special about the Earth. <----- falsify that with evidence, good luck.
Bc there are special things about the earth, eg only known place with life. & where all my memories are from.
Right, also earth is supposed to be in a random location in the universe. But that's an unprovable thesis until we find an outside edge of the universe. Until then it's a belief.
Something special is something set apart. It is far above average. It its the 1%. The 99% are not special. To say the earth is special is to place it in the 1%.
say you’ve arrive on earth & are walking along the street. you run into someone. you automatically assume they are the richest person on earth (ie special by some metric).
You know there are billions of other people on the earth but dont know anything about them. The person you meet is the richest person you know so all evidence is they
are the richest person on earth. Is it reasonable to assume you’ve randomly run into the richest person on earth? Why would you assume there is anything special about this person?
They can be special to you on a personal level (they’re the only person you know) but they are most likely average. Analogously, earth is the first planet we know.
It is the only planet we know that has life. That is the evidence we have that it is special. We also know there are many other planets out there. just like
it is ridiculous to assume the first person you meet is the richest (ie special) why should our default assumption be the earth is not average (ie earth is special)?
By “the earth isn’t special “ I assume you mean the earth is an average planet, with average composition, near an average star, in an average location in the universe?
sorry, **prove** it with good evidence.
That's not the argument he's making. He's saying there's foundational tenants to modern science that are untestable but believed to be true just like a religion.
You’re right, saw this argument in the YT comments. It often applies to fringe people in general. Just a random though about this talk. Dont think it should have been banned btw.
I mean the fact that it was banned tells me that the holy arbiters of truth consider this to be blasphemy. Banned Ted talks are the best Ted talks.
I dont agree but ehh, whatever.
Sheldrake was banned for talking about what the materialist/naturalist/determinist religion call "pseudoscience". But he's using the exact same scientific method that they are.
& people who have been banned who really were crazy (eg alchemists)
But just the fact he is banned is not evidence he is correct. There have been people who have been banned & been correct (eg galileo)
It's not weather he's "correct" or not(technically there is no such thing in science, only evidence). He was banned for questioning authority and asking forbidden questions.
Thoughts in no order: this is the issue with relying on gov money to pay for research (also an issue in Pharma & climate research).
ha, thanks. When I saw a yt link I expected this video, lol:
For example, obviously we can measure that objects generally accelerate towards the ground at 9.8m/s, but we don't observe other more important functions of gravity. We trust scientist
Science (mostly) makes testable predictions about how nature/reality works. Religion makes no testable predictions.
believing something you haven’t proved yourself is not the same thing as believing in something that is impossible to prove. First is trust, second is faith.
How many gods do *you* believe exist? How many do you discount?
