I’ve been thinking about the times we live in, and how we threw away the old religions, and now consider ourselves to be rational beings with rational rules. To that, let me say: Ha. As in Ha Ha. I’ll do a few posts on the subject.
First off, consider this: our society is highly specialized, and so is research. This means we have to believe scientists, or some watered down extension of existing publications ON THEIR WORD.
For instance:
“Omega-3 are good for your immune system”
Do you understand why ? If so, did you review the article ? Did you repeat the experiments ?
So how is this different from someone in a position of authority telling you:
“The virgin Mary was really a virgin”
I’ll grant you, the example of Omega-3 isn’t the best, because in this case (common health), there probably were a few peer reviews, and the statement can be probably accepted as being true.
However, there are much more specialized cases, where there are very few specialists, and where trying to reproduce the tests takes expensive equipment.
The thing is, we just don’t know. We take it, without proof. And that, my friends, is the definition of dogma.
Hello elise
another interesting free distributable movie about the times we live in is http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
there is a movie and a addendum.
it gives you a lot more to think about the times we live in. And why we should take the truth as authority and not the authority as the truth.
The scientific method is the best we have to work with knowledge and expand it. Religion doesn’t work with knowledge. It’s valuable, but an entirely different playing field.
Accepting science without understanding it is different from dogma. Do you understand every single principle that makes your computer work? Really? And does your mother? Many aspects of science prove themselves daily without us even understanding the basics behind them. They will still prove themselves tomorrow.
I suspect “The age of science 2″ will be a plea for generalism and increased verifiability in science. That’s a problem of education, of interest, of attitude, a hard one to tackle.
We can’t simplify science, but I speculate we may have more luck trying to make political and economical processes more verifiable and understandable. They’re human creations. We _can_ simplify politics and economics until Joe Sixpack can understand. We might even benefit from that!
Think about banking for example. It probably makes economical sense to trade a banking system of complex derivatives – understood by few if any – for a simpler banking system understood by Joe Sixpack. What you loose in short term efficiency, you win in trust and long term stability.
@Mark : you misread my criticism. I agree, science is the best tool we have to increase knowledge.
What i’m pointing out is that we, as a race, haven’t evolved at all – we are still the same people who went to mass 5 times a week 50 years ago, and we function the same way.
We do accept the facts we are presented with as dogma, you cannot deny that. Science is the new Truth (capital T).
So you were wrong about ‘Age of Science (2)’. I am going to talk about research institutions, and the ‘human’ irrational factor there (experienced first- and second-hand).
And after that i might talk about the fact that science and logic, while useful tools, are not enough to get by.
I’m not sure I understand what you are trying to say, but please, go on. I’m curious!
Well, then I could also say that the following statement is an obscure specialized dogma like the virginity of the Mary:
“Javascript is a good tool, but in some ways also a security hasard. On top of that, piling on the javascript action is not that great for accessibility: when you have to read a website through your ears, fancy visual effects won’t really work for you.”
But I’m sure we both agree there is one statement we can test and another one we can’t
Definitely – never said you should believe what i’m saying
these posts are my impressions about what’s going on, and as i said in my ‘about’, i love debate. If it starts a good discussion, i’ll be happy to have learned something.