Comment on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:31:25 GMT

As long as we're not sure of the truth (you may be, but our society in general is not), it's silly to go around saying who's "correct" in accepting or rejecting a particular piece of evidence.

Suppose a researcher performs an experiment, and from its results, concludes that lemons cure cancer. Another scientist analyzes their procedure, and points out "Your methodology contains several flaws, and when I perform experiments with those same flaws, I can show with the same level of significance that ham, beeswax, sugarpill, and anything else I've tested, also cures cancer. But if I correct those flaws in the methodology, I stop getting results that indicate that any of these things cure cancer."

Do you continue to accept the experiment as evidence that lemons cure cancer?

I think that you're fully justified in rejecting this evidence based on the way you look at the situation. I look at things differently, and I accept some of the evidence. And thus we disagree. What I'm wondering now is whether you think it's necessarily "wrong" to accept such evidence.

It's hard to get around this without seeming arrogant or condescending, but yes, I do.

It's a major oversimplification to say that my position is simply "the books are all made up and the modern revelation is all brain glitches," but I do believe that every standard of evidence I've encountered in support of any religion (and I've encountered a lot) can be re-applied in other situations where the results are easier to check, and be shown to be ineffective in producing right answers.

If a person does science poorly, then the poorness of their research isn't a matter of opinion, it's a fact about how effectively their experiments allow them to draw true conclusions about reality.

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