How much can you trust a 'scientific concensus' to match real science?
Offline Three (or two at minimum) things will be required. You will have to read and THINK for yourselves.
Watch this: (about 1.5 hours long)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
"Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public [7/2009] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 16717]
Then read either of Gary Taubes excellent two books:
"Good Calories/Bad Calories: the controversial science of diet and nutrition" (search amazon)
or the more recent "Why we get fat and what do to about it" (amazon again). "Why we get fat" is shorter and 'less technical' but still crammed full of the science of the last 100 plus years.
Here's something we don't have to extrapolate back millions and billions of years to get an answer to. We can test it......over and over again in the human population, and have.
The shocker...the science is right...it's the 'consensus' that's wrong.....and it's created a lot of sick and obese people in America.
Why?......let me count the ways.....personal bias, egos, money, politics, 'interest groups', careers built on 'lipophobia', to list some. You can't make a fortune telling people to avoid sugar and many carbohydrates. The Ivory Tower is not as pure and white as some would like you to believe.
So when Dawkins says "our genes created us mind and body"....that's not science....that's magic.
He's virtually plagarized Psalms 100 "It is God who has made up and not we ourselves" and called it science. There is no evidence from science that DNA or any chemical compound can 'create'....it's pure athiest 'magic' passed off as science. There is no 'magic' in the Bible to top Dawkins there.
By the way refined sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, nor aspartame existed when the Bible was written. Some recent studies have shown that even diet soda with Nutrasweet can make you gain weight....even though it has zero calories. Calories in/ calories out?.....it's a myth......yet that's why the 'experts' have been claiming for decades despite evidence to the contrary.
William Shakespeare
How about that homochirality issue?
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/origin_homochirality.html
'junk' or 'selfish' DNA?
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/junkdna.html
Science has filled gaps........but it's created bigger ones all over again by filling the ones it has.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atheismintro3.html
"Multiverse theories aren't theories-they're science fictions, theologies, works of the imagination unconstrained by evidence."
John Horgan, agnostic
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How much trust can we have in the scientific consensus at any time to match reality?
Never 100%, of course.
And the confidence we can have in any specific theory goes from close to 100% for thoroughly tested and established areas, to somewhat tentative at the frontiers of research.
So there is no simple answer to such a question.
Continued scientific research and debate among scientists is the only way we find any errors within science, where researchers generally have an incentive to try and overturn previous findings.
The accumulation of scientific knowledge is continuing to be a net gain, the gaps are actually being filled in. The remaining 'gaps' are mostly blanks in our knowledge that were always there, but only become apparent when we get sufficiently far into a subject to see them, or correct an old error.
To talk about creating bigger gaps by 'filling in existing ones' betrays a total ignorance of what is going on. As we are able to turn up the magnification on the microscopes and telescopes and other instruments, the new 'gaps' my well appear as large or larger than the old ones, but that is only because of the very high magnification of our instruments, the vastly increased precision with which we can measure reality.
The newer areas such as genetics and cognitive research have only become accessible to serious research in recent decades, and are intrinsically more complex than many established disciplines, so are going to throw up more subtle and tricky issues, but progress continues, even as we are confronted by new areas of the 'unknown' as that progress takes us around a new corner... It is only the real progress we have already made that allows us to see the next level of stuff to be explained.
Old models of reality are still applicable within the scope and context within which they were devised. In most everyday analysis of motion and forces, Newton's ideas are still all we need, even though Einstein's theories have replaced them at the top level.
The products of technology, based on scientific discoveries, obviously work, and are not going to suddenly stop working as science progresses.
There is no alternative to empirical research and experiment to gain real knowledge, and hope to transcend to any degree the limitations and biases of the individual human mind.
Of course it ain't perfect. Nothing is. It is still a vast improvement over the metaphysics and theology and intuition that previous attempts at gaining knowledge were based on before.
Religion, revelation, faith, are only speculation, based on limited human intuition, barely reaching the status of a scientific hypothesis in terms of 'knowledge'.
The 'God' concepts are against logic and reason at every level. They have been going in the opposite direction, receding into the sea of ancient error and superstition from which they emerged.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Beyond what Bob was explaining to you it is even more simple than that.
Gods/deities/ disembodied brain claims, did not start in a period of testing and falsification. Magical invisible super friend sky daddy claims started in an age of ignorance. If you want to believe in Santa bad enough, you will. But modern science isn't based on wishful thinking.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Quote mining.
Give us the context please.
In any event, he's correct. We are a collection of a specific arrangement of genes.
False.
Dawkins doesn't say the one creates oneself. But it is correct that one is certainly a part of one's evolution from childhood.
Correction.
There's no evidence that you are aware of. That's an argument from ignorance.
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
That quote from Dawkins didn't show up for me in a Google search, so please give us some context.
Although it is consistent with his idea of the 'selfish gene', where all that matters in evolution is what maximizes the replication of the genes.
So no, it's not 'magic' - God is 'magic'.
New patterns are indeed 'created' by random mutation, and useful versions of these genuinely new patterns, such as the sequence of bases in the DNA in a particular organism, get propagated on to the next generation.
Random variation is the best process to create genuinely new patterns and structures which are not related to existing structures by some logical or rational mathematical process.
This is used to come up with solutions to very complex problems, in what are called 'genetic algorithms', computer programs which generate new sub-programs by modelling the evolutionary process of random mutation followed by selection of those which come closest to solving the problem.
There is plenty of scientific evidence that random mutation of DNA can indeed lead to genuinely unexpected and novel forms. The now famous Lenski experiment in tracking genetic changes in colonies of bacteria has also demonstrated that DNA can 'create' new capabilities.
So, BookOfJob, you are wrong at every level. Your beliefs are the reverse of the truth.
EDIT: A scientific consensus is formed precisely because of a general agreement that it does indeed seem to match reality to good degree, based on all the testing to date. SO your question makes no sense.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Please see the "Oort Cloud". It is Science based entirely 100% wishful thinking. And that's just one example.
It has yet to be directly observed, but is proposed precisely because there does seem to be significant evidence for it, as with any hypothesis in Science. So it is indeed purely wishful thinking to assume that it is an example of how Science can go completely wrong.
The only reference I found against it in a quick Google was from 'answersingenesis.org'. What a surprise. Genesis is a compilation of fantasy and error - should be called 'errorsingenesis.org'.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Yep they just have these comets that have lasted for longer than your apologists say they possible can that came from somewhere outside this system. No real science there. Do you think God is out there throwing snowballs or something?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
There is no such thing as 100% certainty regarding anything, as Bob has already pointed out. Scientific method is no different, it just works in probabilities. Some things we take for granted and we claim as certain because it is easier than to point out the 99.9999999999% probability. Paradigm shifts happen all the time, but they always incorporate the provable fundamentals of the previous science. See Relativity versus Newtonian gravity theory, we don't just disregard everything we have previously learned and consider it 'wrong' (whatever that even means, wrong/right are meaningless in this context).
I have a little fable to share that sort of touches on the whole weight gain thing. I grew up in Romania until 1992, I was 14 when I immigrated to Canada, there were some rough times back there, people had to grow their own food even in the cities to supplement the rations given by the state. I grew up in a city close to the capital of about 50,000 people. There were about 4 obese people in that city, and the one I knew personally had a thyroid issue that was not treated properly. The answer is simple, lack of food and different lifestyle. We had 2 channels on TV with communist propaganda, and those were only on for 4 hours a day during the week. As far as the calories in calories out thing, it is true to a certain degree, calories burned and the type of calories and sleep also come into consideration. I have gone through a phase of amateur body building in my early twenties and I was counting my calories religiously at one point. It works like a charm, it is no fun, but it does work. If you are disciplined enough it really does work like a mathematical formula. You take in 2000 calories a day for the week, and burn 500 in workout, and if your BMI requires 1700 calories to maintain you will lose the desired weight.
I find all this mystical approach to weight loss and dieting amusing, it is as simple as stop eating so much food, and don't sit on your ass all day. No mystery, just will power.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
It must suck to find out that all of your personal substance arises out of complex chemical reactions, and not a "soul".
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)