Secret Heart..... Can you please list what was considered scientific fact 100 years ago, that no longer is.
This is where people are being deceived..... Bear in mind you used the words 'scientific' and 'fact' as you make the list!
Cosmos--any creationists watching? And what does EVEryONE think of it?
by Jon Preston 33 Replies latest jw friends
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SecretHeart11
S&R: The example I was thinking of when writing that was germs. There was other theories about what caused disease that were accepted. That was relatively recent (1800s?). More than 100 years granted, but I was talking in general terms. There were also medical practices that would never be done now like they were (blood letting) that were the norm. I'm not saying science is wrong, I just think it's arrogant to think 100% of current accepted scientific knowledge is correct now.
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snare&racket
Everything you mentioned was neither fact or scientific.
But....germ theory is correct despite it still being a theory. it was first considered following Semmelveis and also the first epidemiologust Jon Snow and the Broad street pump's cholera epidemic. It was only recently confirmed for sure when we could see and detect the pathogens with instruments. But it is still called a theory. Does that mean it can be wrong? Of course not!
What science is, what facts are, what theories are, what evidence is.....these are the misconception many people are left with following a religious indoctrination, I certainly was.
If something was learned via a scientific approach (i explain it below), it becomes evidence, the theories are constructed solely based on the evidence, but is only subject to change based on more evidence that ADDS to the theory. This is progress, this is how we have advanced so much in the last 150 years. There is no shame in moving on with our knowledge. Adding to our knowledge is not a weakness and in no way states that we could be wrong about everything, simply that we could have a lot more to learn about everything!
Germ theory is true and can never be false or changed, however we can learn more about its mechanisms and so it remains a body of knowledge, a theory.
This is not to be confused with previous false ideas that people had in history, they had nothing to do with science!
Also there are very few scientific facts, a good one example may be the earth being round, that the earth goes around the sun currently etc. Again, do you really believe there is a possibility that these things are wrong? Of course they are not!
But atoms, gravity, evolution, even germs.... are all a theory, that is a body of evidence collated together. We have more evidence for explaining evolution than we do for gravity. Will you deny gravity? Want to chance we are wrong about it by hopping off a cliff?
What is science?
science is information gathered by research conducted using the scientific method, a 5 stage process that eliminates as much human bias and error as possible. That's it! That is all science is. Those things you listed.... Were they learned via science? No!!
Non scientists especially with a religious background, will list things such as the earth being flat as examples of science being wrong in the past, or as you just did, suggesting that there were many wrong ideas about what caused disease......these ideas were neither scientific or facts. I used to make the same mistake myself.
Secret Heart, if a conculsion was reached without using the scientific method.....it wasn't science! The scientific method was first penned properly by Francis Bacon only about 200 years ago. Now, all research is measured for its legitimacy against that standard. If it doesn't measure up it is dismissed until it is done properly. This is what has brought us from horse and cart to space stations in less than a hundred years!
Evolution is something we can witness in a lab, we can even manipulate evolution in the real world! Big bangs are also something we can make in a lab, we also can see, hear snd witness it's effects in the real world. These things won't be and can't be reversed.....
A fact is something we know for sure, germ theory is still a theory but we know for s fact germs exist, same goes for atomic theory, the theory of gravity and the theory of evolution etc etc etc...
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Viviane
I just think it's arrogant to think 100% of current accepted scientific knowledge is correct now.
Of course. That's not at all what science is about or what any good scientist thinks. That's why they still do science.
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snare&racket
Of course, scientists get excited sbout proving idess wrong by ADDING to them, but this in no way means we live in a workd now where the knowledge science brings us csn be possibly burned on a fire as totally untrue, such ss the idea of blood letting or believing the esrth is flat.
Simply put, all modern scientific ideas are based on evidence, hard real, factual evidence. The new ideas in science that change old ideas comes from new addition evidence that puts the older evidence in context. So our ideas progress, but been as the old evidence is just as legitimate as the new, our ideas don't change wildly.
see it as a jigsaw, evidence is a jigsaw piece. What we think the picture is may change the more pieces we find, but the oldest pieces we find are still pieces. Compare that to days before science, where we just made shit up, ignoring the jigsaw pieces for what we wanted the picture to be or for what we were told the picture was.
evolution is a great example as we have 150 years of evidence. New evidence chsnges dstes, it changes tne order of how we thought things were done, it adds to ideas about what happened where and when. But there is no evidence out there that can dismiss the millions and millions of pieces of evidence for evolution.
Physics is an exciting region of science right now, because we are only just entering a stage where we have the technology to really grab real evidence for theories, so it is an exciting time snd specialitu for scientists. They are moving from thought experiments snd maths to real science. We will lesrn a lit sbout the universe in the next few hundred years for sure. Again, evidence they find is evidence, it csn't be un-found. So even though they may find more evidence that changes the jigsaw apperance, the pieces they find now are still part of the picture.
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SecretHeart11
Yes Vivian, thanks, that's all I meant. I wasn't meaning to start a debate. I'm not very informed on the subject (not a very scientific thinker) and I'm not claiming to be some sort of expert. I was wanting to reply to the poster and say I thought that's what s/he meant. Like you said, if we had all the answers we'd just stop right?
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SecretHeart11
S&R: Ok I think I was mixing up "theory" and "fact". Although to be fair a lot of theories are talked about as fact. I wasn't using that debate to disprove evolution (it would be like denying dinosaurs when you can see the bones! Or like you said About earth being flat / round, not something that can change). I guess I essentially agree, we could see in 150 years how we were flawed in a parts of these theories, but was misusing terms. Thanks for your post, you sound a lot smarter than me lol I don't think that germs or evolution or dinosaurs will be disproven in years to come, but our understanding of them and their history could certainly change. And I agree I was definitely disadvantaged getting a one sided education when it came to these topics.
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snare&racket
No worries, i wasn't gunning for you or what you said, but it is hugely damaging to continue the idea that what science discovers now has anything to do with ideas random himans had in the past. They are in no way connected. I wish I had recognised that simple fact when I was younger too.
snare x
p,s. Clever/smarts/ intelligence is nothing to do with it, just information. Knowledge is power.
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Pistoff
Will-be-apostate:
" I don't think creationists got it right, but I truly am starting to see that many evolutionists are just as arrogant and ignorant as creationists and other beleivers"
It may be because scientists have spent years studying a science that accepts new facts, yes, but has not yet come up with evidence that evolution is false.
Religion on the other hand hangs onto wrong ideas for centuries, even millenia, and condemns unbelievers to hell.
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Caedes
I don't think creationists got it right, but I truly am starting to see that many evolutionists are just as arrogant and ignorant as creationists and other beleivers. Let them live their life and beleive what they want to.
Can you give an example of 'evolutionists' being arrogant or ignorant? By the way the use of the word 'evolutionism' is an indication to most rational people that the person using it is a creationist. There is no such thing as evolutionism. Acceptance of evolution as scientific fact is due to the fact that it is a proven theory. Is a person who accepts Einstein's theory of relativity a relativitist?
It's the mere fact that many evolutionists and the media tres to make everyone accept their theories is what irritates me. Especially about the formation of planets, the Moon etc.... theories and "maybe"s upon "maybe"s, yet they say you are stupid and ignorant if you have other views. I'd bet that 50% of what we know today will be either proved wrong or altered.
You are incorrect in your assumption, it is not a fact.
If you are going into engineering you should be learning what is meant by the word theory and you should already know about the scientific method. For all intents and purposes when a scientist uses the word theory they mean what a layperson means when they say fact. In everyday speech theory means an unproven idea, in science it means a proven idea. The formation of planets is a widely understood application of the effects of gravity on matter, gravity is not a maybe. I would say that you are stupid and ignorant if you think that you can just come up with some wild idea on planetary formation without being able to back your idea up with the maths that make it possible. For your idea to become science you have to be able to prove it.
If you really think that 50% of our current science is wrong then you don't understand science. As an engineering student can you tell me why you still use Newton's laws of motion despite the fact that Einstein proved that they were 'wrong'?
I hope somebody understands my point.
I understand your point, it is merely based on invalid assumptions.