Before The Big Bang!

[213374U]

Postulates may make sense, and that's why they are accepted.  But you can't say that science is based solely on evidence, when postulates are a large part of science and they are unproven.

No, that's not how inductive reasoning works. In a situation of "if and only if", a reductio ad absurdum proof proves beyond all doubt that the condition you are enouncing is true. As I said, it's as valid as any other reasoning structure you can think of. Experimental evidence works in a similar way.

 

Inductive reasoning is an important pillar of mathematics AND logic. Neither of those have anything to do with faith. Just like science.

 

 

You can't deny that science requires a portion of belief and then discount how we are expected to believe something that is unproven as as the basis of evidence for everything else.

No, you're not expected to believe something outright. If you did, there would be no need for proof. But, for the sake of discussion, you work based on that postulate. If you fail to arrive to satisfactory conclusions based on your postulate, then you are forced to rework that postulate, discard it, or become a prophet of your own truth. Only then would faith be a factor.

[EnderAndrew]

Postulates are used to prove other things. Postulates as per their definition can't be proven.

 

Thusly, you have to believe them without proof.

 

How is that not being expected to believe something outright?

[213374U]

Postulates are used to prove other things.  Postulates as per their definition can't be proven.

No. Wiki reductio

 

 

Thusly, you have to believe them without proof.

No, you don't "believe" in them. You operate based on them for the sake of discussion. It's not the same thing.

[6 Foot Invisible Rabbit]

I do not go by belief. Never have and never will. I will always go by what I know, by what I have personally experience. What happened before the Big ang? Does it really matter? What matters is what is happening now and in the present. No more and no less.

[213374U]

I do not go by belief.  Never have and never will.  I will always go by what I know, by what I have personally experience.  What happened before the Big ang?  Does it really matter?  What matters is what is happening now and in the present.  No more and no less.

Oh, but it does matter. Knowledge is not composed of an infinity of isolated cells. Knowledge is a whole, and as far-fetched as it may be, knowing about the origins of the Universe could help save your life one day. The future will be the present at some point.

[metadigital]

Believers often say that science is as much of a religion as Christianity or Islam, but I've yet to see a convinving justification for this.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I often use gravity as an example of science since this is perhaps the most commonly accepted law of physics. Also, you don't have to have a great understanding of science to understand gravity.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It is commonly accepted because it is universal. It is everywhere, affecting everything in relation to everything else, tempered by the inverse square of their distance apart.

It is commonly accepted that science is based off evidence, and religion is based on faith in the abscene of evidence.  So, let's take gravity.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This argument is a fallacious syllogism.

Science requires evidence.

Proof requires evidence.

Faith does not require evidence.

Science has no proof, therefore it is based on faith.

What you are forgetting is that Religious Faith is based on an unquestionable source. Science, on the other had, no only encourages questions, but demands them.

If you were to drop a pen, it would fall to the ground.  Logical leaps seem to suggest that objects drop down.  However, perspective tells us that down is relative.  If we look at a scale larger than our own world, down doesn't exist really.  We then theorize that objects of smaller mass are attracted to objects of larger mass.  This attraction only extends so far, as we call a gravitational well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here. What does the relative direction of "Down" have to do with the force of gravity? Gravity acts accoring to the size AND NEARNESS of bodies; as the equation is the inverse sqaure of the distance apart, even though the Sun is 330,330 times the size of the Earth, it is also an Astronomical Unit distant, therefore the force is a lot less (but it still exists, which is why the tides, for example, are affeted by the Sun's gravitational pull -- in addition to the Moon, of course, which is closer and therefore has a larger affect).

A large problem then exists when we start to observe how objects in space react to each other.  Our calculations on gravity don't seem to work, because when studying that appear to have gravitational relationships with each other in space, we can only account for 10% of the mass that should be making various gravitational pulls.

 

Unless 90% of the mass of the universe is hiding from any means of detection we have, we don't really understand gravity.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, Dark matter and Dark energy were predicted by Albert Einstein in his calculations following the publishiing of his theories of Relativity.

And let's be clear here; the quantum adjustments to the basic laws are just finding a suitable constant to use in the proportion of the same Newtonian equation. It's not a new equation, by any means.

Science can't accept it's previous theory was flawed.  Science can't accept that we need a new perspective on the whole picture.  Science plucks an answer from the heavens and gives it to us with no real rhyme or reason.

 

Dark matter supposedly exists, which if it were to exist, would explain this missing mass.  We have no real evidence to suggest dark matter does exist, but we teach it in classes to cover what science can explain.

 

When you really dig, you will find countless stopgaps such as dark matter.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

We have the evidence that the universe is expanding at a rate that -- presently -- can only be explained by Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

Science is all about perspective.  When man stands and looks out on the horizon, we see what clearly appears to be the sun revolving around the earth, and that is what science claimed for ages.  A perspective comparing shadows in different locales led us to realize the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, but rather vice versa.  When we launched into space, a clearer perspective helped reassure the now commonly accepted belief that the earth revolves around the sun.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's the beauty of relativity. Is the Earth orbiting the sun? Yes. Is the Sun moving around the Earth? Yes! The orbit of the Earth around the Sun was actually predicted by Aristotle, so it is hardly new. Eratosthenes even measured the size of the globe of the Earth about two and a half millennia ago. Don't forget that the Sun is orbiting around galactic central point, taking 200 billion years to make one revolution (because we are 50 thousand light years from the centre), and the galaxy itself is accelerating out from the Big Bang.

Scientific theories are guesses at explaining things we can't explain.  Religion is a means of explaining the universe as well.  There are those that would contend that meditation, prayer, or prophetizing is just as valid a means for gathering answers as observations and calculations.

 

Surely, as we have logic, we also have emotions.  What you feel can be in contradiction to what you think in a given moment.  If there is logical truth, can there not also be emotional truth?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The two methods are completely alien and not comparable. Deductive reasoning from observation to provide predictions that can be measured to whatever decimal place is totally different from John Smith announcing in the nineteenth century that he has found some gold tablets inscribed by God that explain how the (white) Europeans arrived in the North American continent a thousand years before Columbus, and thus is born the Church of Latter Day Saints. Oh, and by the way, polygamy is okay if you're a senior clergy.

I'm not saying one is more valid than the other.  I just think the two are far more similiar than people are willing to let on.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am saying one is more valid than the other. One demands that we check and recheck and validate and cross-validate with every new theory and discovery; the other demands absolute obedience with no possible gainsay. History is replete with examples of which one best suits the frailties of humans and their leaders ...

 

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving

And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,

That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,

A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day

In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,

Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.

It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.

It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,

But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.

We go 'round every two hundred million years,

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe.

 

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding

In all of the directions it can whizz

As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,

Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,

How amazingly unlikely is your birth,

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,

'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

[metadigital]

Postulates are used to prove other things.  Postulates as per their definition can't be proven.

 

Thusly, you have to believe them without proof.

 

How is that not being expected to believe something outright?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

and

It sure would be, if science needed belief. But it doesn't. Science is about the observation of the underlying natural patterns that can be recognized and structured into mathematical systems. Mathematics don't need you to believe in them, and by association, neither does science.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Apparently you've never heard of postulates?

 

Postulates are unprovable commonly accepted "truths" of mathmatetics and sciences. We use them as starting grounds for futher theories and proofs.

 

We simply believe them to believe them.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'll step in here. As I have said before "There are no sects in geometry"