Faith in science

Originally posted by @kellyjay
Did you read what I said? You can have assumptions apply numbers to them, the numbers says this, or that and all of the calculations were spot on! If your assumptions were incorrect your good math is meaningless to your conclusions!

So prove it, take a specific case and tear it apart. That is what scientists are SUPPOSED to do, crush the opposition! Some scientists make their career by refuting work done by others and that alone advances science so it is a vital part of science to be able to debunk the work of others. If they succeed they advance science.

Scientists don't mind at all (well MUCH anyway🙂 when someone proves them wrong.

Some of them fight tooth and nail till they die and often that is how science advances also, when he dies and was wrong but influencial enough to brainwash other scientists into following his work.

But if you have a specific gripe, prove it, don't just utter opinion, which is all you have done so far, utter self porclaimed opinion.

I can say Earth is shaped like a Dunkin doughnut but all I have is my opinion, I have my work cut out for me to prove that notion.

Originally posted by @sonhouse
So prove it, take a specific case and tear it apart. That is what scientists are SUPPOSED to do, crush the opposition! Some scientists make their career by refuting work done by others and that alone advances science so it is a vital part of science to be able to debunk the work of others. If they succeed they advance science.

Scientists don't mind at a ...[text shortened]... unkin doughnut but all I have is my opinion, I have my work cut out for me to prove that notion.

Prove it? If your wrong about rate of decay over some period of time, and you use the improper rate of decay to come up with some measurement of time, will you be correct? You will have the math right, but wrong assumptions will give you a wrong answer.

You needed that explained?

Originally posted by @kellyjay
If you want to talk time and scripture we can, what I am speaking about has to do with conclusions made about the distant past or future apart from scripture.

Seeing x and suggesting that it means something millions or billions ago due to numbers we see today, means that there are assumptions made about x. Running the numbers could be spot on, but if the assumptions are not correct it doesn’t matter.

“Seeing x and suggesting that it means something millions or billions ago due to numbers we see today, means that there are assumptions made about x.”

Yes, and the challenge is to test the reliability of these assumptions. Then the results might reveal new assumptions to be tested. Supposing that this is an endless cycle, limited only by the actual time remaining, is this possibility proof of its own falsehood? I say no, instead it is either liked or disliked depending on our disposition about certainty or uncertainty being available to us.

Originally posted by @js357
“Seeing x and suggesting that it means something millions or billions ago due to numbers we see today, means that there are assumptions made about x.”

Yes, and the challenge is to test the reliability of these assumptions. Then the results might reveal new assumptions to be tested. Supposing that this is an endless cycle, limited only by the actual time re ...[text shortened]... d or disliked depending on our disposition about certainty or uncertainty being available to us.

Assumptions over millions of years ago and billions of years ago can be checked or just accepted?

Originally posted by @kellyjay
Assumptions over millions of years ago and billions of years ago can be checked or just accepted?

Yes. Or not. No necessity.

Originally posted by @js357
Yes. Or not. No necessity.

What a none answer.

Originally posted by @kellyjay
What a none answer.

Sorry to disappoint. But are.t those the options religion offers, too?

Originally posted by @js357
Sorry to disappoint. But are.t those the options religion offers, too?

Actually that is why Jesus Christ is much more than a religion, He actually enters into our
lives. That is quite different than just following the rules of do this, and don't do that, and for
that matter He is the best part of life in my opinion.

Originally posted by @js357
Sorry to disappoint. But are.t those the options religion offers, too?

Are you admitting that to accept what is believed true millions and billions of years ago are
just matters of faith?

Originally posted by @kellyjay
Are you admitting that to accept what is believed true millions and billions of years ago are
just matters of faith?

“Faith” is such a loaded word especially on this forum that I hesitate to use it in any unqualified way. You qualify itself as “just...faith” which seems to minimize it, whereas the “admission” is the heart of this thread.

It’s a matter of faith if it is based on the conviction that it comes from an infallible source, and is not a matter of faith if the source is believed to be possibly inaccurate or mistaken.

How’s that?

Originally posted by @js357
“Faith” is such a loaded word especially on this forum that I hesitate to use it in any unqualified way. You qualify itself as “just...faith” which seems to minimize it, whereas the “admission” is the heart of this thread.

It’s a matter of faith if it is based on the conviction that it comes from an infallible source, and is not a matter of faith if the source is believed to be possibly inaccurate or mistaken.

How’s that?

I’d say very close. even if my source is infallible I am not. So I still have to walk out my life in faith; in addition, if can’t prove or provide proof of my source it’s still faith. The possibility of believing and knowing I could be wrong means I am walking in faith.

Originally posted by @kellyjay
Prove it? If your wrong about rate of decay over some period of time, and you use the improper rate of decay to come up with some measurement of time, will you be correct? You will have the math right, but wrong assumptions will give you a wrong answer.

You needed that explained?

Just saying IF such and such happens then the result is wrong, is not enough. You need to prove your contention that the assumptions are wrong, using scientific method.

You can't just point to a bible verse and expect people to believe you on a scientific subject.

It takes better science to prove earlier science wrong.

BTW, the 'assumptions' you mention have been looked at for generations and nobody has come up with any change in the confidence level of dating assumptions. Like C14 dating, which I am sure that is one of the 'assumptions' you talk about, they can count very exact decay rates for C14 and that work has been done a hundred times by many scientists in several fields. They come to a conclusion based on literally years and years of work before announcing the usefulness of C14 as a dating system. The same with other kinds like photoemission dating, looking at quartz to see the last time a piece of quartz saw sunlight, changes take place that are chartable.

The fact you dis the assumptions is based on your reticence to accept scientific evidence refuting the biblical dating which is an artificial number based also on an assumption: That the roger begat mary begat billy begat Orka, and so forth, ASSUMING all those begats are 100% accurate.

Can you in your heart say that is 100% true, that ancient writers could not have made mistakes in the begat game?

It is only the literalistic reading of biblical tales in the 19th century that caused this rift between science and religion, besides the evolution issue that is.

Originally posted by @kellyjay
I’d say very close. even if my source is infallible I am not. So I still have to walk out my life in faith; in addition, if can’t prove or provide proof of my source it’s still faith. The possibility of believing and knowing I could be wrong means I am walking in faith.

Of course we have to accept our own fallibility, at least I do, I get proof of that all the time. The proof of the infallibility of one’s source may be the difference that having a source that one can believe is infallible, makes in one’s life. But these considerations go beyond the subject matter of whether x happened in a particular way some billions of years ago. That’s how “faith” is loaded with meaning well beyond believing the mundane facts of history.

Originally posted by @kellyjay
Are you admitting that to accept what is believed true millions and billions of years ago are
just matters of faith?

Not faith, but confidence in the works of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years. You see the results in medicine, optics, rockets, computers, transport, all using the scientific method which produces solid results, it got man landing on the moon.

Bur you dis sciences that age Earth in spite of the fact they use the exact same methods of science, but now that it refutes the interpreted age of Earth, now all of a sudden, that science is now only to be taken on faith, thus turning science into a religion when it is most definitely not a religion because the results of science changes year by year. It certainly is a fact YOU take the age of Earth on faith, faith in the judgement of men who going by the premise the bible is infallible, count the listed begats and come up with the well known religious version of the age of Earth and that in spite of the fact there are geological processes that could not possibly have happened in a few thousand years, like the dozens of rock formations bent 180 degrees, bent like taffy. None of that matters because some dude added up the begats and that HAS to be 100% correct.

And the age of the universe which you want people to take on faith also, but we know light travels a 186,242 miles per second, always has, always will except for traveling in a deep gravity well. So we can make good judgements of the distance to galaxies and we see them out to near 14 billion light years.

But you don't want that to be a science, you want that to be a religion. The big band is just one theory of how the universe got here, there are others where there WAS no big bang.

So science pursues the issue but is not calling it a law of nature the universe got here only via the BB.
That is why science is NOT a religion, BECAUSE it can change, whereas your religion will stay fixed in place a thousand years ago, today, and a thousand years from now, meanwhile science advances and is totally different than it was a thousand years ago and will be unrecognizable a thousand years hence. Assuming we get to HAVE science for the next thousand years.

Originally posted by @sonhouse
Not faith, but confidence in the works of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years. You see the results in medicine, optics, rockets, computers, transport, all using the scientific method which produces solid results, it got man landing on the moon.

Bur you dis sciences that age Earth in spite of the fact they use the exact same methods of science ...[text shortened]... ecognizable a thousand years hence. Assuming we get to HAVE science for the next thousand years.

Do you have complete trust or confidence in the works of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years?

Yes or No?