SSM Plebiscite

[PaulP]

There is not a shred of evidence for the multiverse, there is not a shred of evidence for dark energy or dark matter. Yet physicists will tell you that is the current belief or hypothesis. I understand the scientific method perfectly well.

[deags]

Yep, and that's why they are theories.

[DJC]

Ray, whilst I generally agree, I think if you look closely you will see that materialist science, which is the current dominant paradigm, has become as intolerant and dogmatic as religion was back in the day. Science cannot, and was never meant to, explain all of reality. Science is very useful, and it has certainly been successful, but it needs to restrict itself to the subset of phenomena that it is equipped to explore. The big problem is that science currently thinks that if it cannot explain something, then that something is either BS, pseudoscience, or simply not worth knowing. Which is completely wrong.

That’s not how science works Paul. 

Coincidentally, the t-shirt I was wearing yesterday has the message, “Science doesn’t care what you believe.”  Similarly, science doesn’t think! 

[PaulP]

Yep, and that's why they are theories.

I know that. The point I'm making is that materialist science is quite happy to accept a hypothesis without evidence, so long as that hypotheses comes from within science. It the source is from elsewhere and has no evidence, it is dismissed and poo pooed by the scientific community as pseudoscience etc.

[PaulP]

That’s not how science works Paul. 

................

That's exactly how science works.

[deags]

I know that. The point I'm making is that materialist science is quite happy to accept a hypothesis without evidence, so long as that hypotheses comes from within science. It the source is from elsewhere and has no evidence, it is dismissed and poo pooed by the scientific community as pseudoscience etc.

I kind of get the point you are trying to make, and I "think" I disagree. Could you give me an example of the pseudoscience you are referring to?
I mean the scientific community as a whole rarely agrees on any hypothesis until there is enough evidence to show that it is true at this point in time, based on other things we as a society/they as a scientific community believe to be true. Pseudoscience is rarely tested let alone have any data to show that it is in fact correct. I would like to know though, which pseudoscience you are referring to to try and better understand your argument?

[PaulP]

I kind of get the point you are trying to make, and I "think" I disagree. Could you give me an example of the pseudoscience you are referring to?
I mean the scientific community as a whole rarely agrees on any hypothesis until there is enough evidence to show that it is true at this point in time, based on other things we as a society/they as a scientific community believe to be true. Pseudoscience is rarely tested let alone have any data to show that it is in fact correct. I would like to know though, which pseudoscience you are referring to to try and better understand your argument?

For starters, just about any of Rupert Sheldrake's work.

[deags]

I'm not familiar with his work.
I will have to look him up.

[LP]

It's interesting how followers of a dogma accuse science of being dogmatic, it seems impossible for many to separate their need for belief from scientific observation.

There is a general societal failure to understand the meaning of hypothesis and theory in a scientific context. Claiming that a scientific hypothesis or theory is about faith or belief is an error made from a dogmatic perspective, hypothesis built on faith would be examples of pseudoscience unproven or proven to be untestable or unmeasurable.

In science a hypothesis only becomes theory when the probability of it being true is very high, always after measurement and testing.

In dogma and in general society theory is widely misused, an idea which would more correctly be described as a claim without supporting evidence is frequently labeled a theory. It requires some faith or belief.

Science is not a belief system, belief has no part of science, and confidence in a scientific hypothesis is not about faith. An assertion can be made in science(Asking a question), choosing the assertion is not faith or belief base, because by default you must then test all cases supporting and counter to your assertion. In science an hypothesis is nothing more than a starting point, a starting point that may be based on some previous evidence but not necessarily, and a valid result in science can be either negative and positive.

If it is not measurable, testable and repeatable then it is not science, it is then a matter of faith. Phenomena that cannot be measured and tested has a high probability of not being real.

New Age has a horrendous history of misappropriation of terms like science, hypothesis and proof because many ideas proselytized are deliberately fashioned to be impossible to prove or disprove. By definition you might claim you cannot prove a negative result, in this regard those New Age ideas are nothing more than philosophical toys. Language gymnastics, not real science. We conduct this debate here in English, in other languages the terms might not even exists in which we can frame some of these pseudoscience issues, yet science's hypothesis, measurement and testing spans any language, the scientific method is not dependent on belief, faith, perspective or language.

[DJC]

I was going to respond but LP has nailed it - and far more eloquently and succinctly than I could have managed.