this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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There absolutely are rules that apply across fields. One of them is coming up with a hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis and not accepting it as fact until it’s been tested, proven, re-proven, and peer reviewed. That’s the basis of science.
I agree with you, there are rules, they are vaguely followed by most scientific disciplines, but in practice those rules play out very differently across different contexts. See: Knorr-Cetina's Epistemic Cultures
Have you even read the source you linked? I am getting heavy, heavy bad faith argumentation from you. Either you truly don't understand what is being said here or you are arguing in bad faith.
Yeah, I know you're getting bad faith vibes, I get it. No. Fellow athiest, overly educated, social scientist and critical theorist. I've read all of my sources - but I'll admit that one of them (whatever Christian site I liked to) was a quick skim to confirm that yes, this was a long discussion about the different factions and their disagreements, and that was exactly the point I was looking to make.
The original post - the image itself - demonstrates a genuine lack of understanding of the history and philosophy of science. I've cited Fleck elsewhere in the comments. It's just a meme community, I can let that slide.
The comments that seem to be suggesting that disagreement among members of a religion is sufficient to dismiss their ideas is, however, more worrying. Disagreements and their resolutions (or lack thereof) are key features of scientific discovery - we need diverse perspectives, we need people who disagree, we need people who argue their positions in compelling and challenging ways. To call out those disagreements as epistemic flaws in contrast to science dismisses the incredible importance of disagreement and controversy in not just science but in all areas of human and social life.
As I've said elsewhere in the comments - both science and religion are messy, problematic, lack internal consistency, and have caused great human and environmental harms. That doesn't mean science isn't useful, and science isn't diminished by our frank discussion of it.
edit: reviewer @fkn has requested a revision of paragraph two, and the author acknowledges that all of the above was written in haste (and surrounded by loud children)
*edit 2: apologies, I was replying from my inbox, didn't get the context. Yes, I've read Epistemic Cultures on many, many occasions, and probably have suggested others read it as many times.
After reading another thread you are commenting on, I am inclined to give you a second chance at your post. Go ahead and re-read that absolutely garbage second paragraph and try again.
Edited and responded to. Was also busy with a larger response.
Now your points make sense. I generally agree with the stance you have presented. I also think that most critically thinking people would also be able to get this position as well.
That said, when looking at the flow of thread responses here I can see why people are annoyed and your comments are generally downvoted. The initial responses, while consistent with your more thorough presentation, can be construed as a false equivalence argument (which is where the bad faith argumentation accusation I made comes from). Generally, dealing with religious trolls who use nearly identical arguments, who also gish gallop and such drives people insane.
Disagreements in the scientific community and disagreements in religious communities are not the same. Suggesting that they are equal reeks of religious trolling trying to discredit the scientific method.
Great! My only defense is that I tend to have very little time to post - and what started as casual disagreement turned into something I wanted to see through.
Speaking of, I still disagree - and more specifically I'll say that both are epistemic communities, engaged in epistemic debates, using agreed upon epistemic practices and techniques for members of those communities.
Again, just because you (and I!) have problems with those epistemic practices is no reason to describe their debates as foundationally different. Unless I'm wrong, you and others in the thread have argued that the debates - on the basis of the forms and types of evidence being mobilized - are problematic compared to those in science. If we're talking about the evidence as the problem, we're talking about epistemology, not controversy.
While my core point here is (admittedly!) relatively tiny and pedantic, the argument here highlights what I see as the bigger problem, which is that many atheists are willing to count the lived messiness of epistemic communities against the religious, while they raise science to be some gleaming, monolithic, purely logical practice. It's not, making shared knowledge is messy, and saying so does not make science any less legitimate.
I actually do think this is part of the problem. For me, we haven't even gotten to the question of evidence. Religious "knowledge" is based around non-falsifiability of certain doctrines and axioms. Even within their own epistemological frameworks they have non-falsifiable arguments. This is fundamentally at odds with scientific process which must be fundamentally falsifiable.
Religious disagreements are fundamentally different than scientific disagreements. From an epistemological core they are different. Either things are falsifiable or they are not. I would go so far as to argue that religious arguments typically are epistemologically unsound for this reason, regardless of evidence.
Agreed! Vaguely. I'm not sure I'm sure of that - but only because I personally just don't know enough religion to confirm.
Disagreed, following on from Kuhn and Lakatos (not exactly a high-quality source, but it's a reasonably to the point overview of the criticisms of falsifiability).
In a broadly over-general way, people who adhere to both science and religion attempt to make sense of their experiences as everyday practice. Both lay-persons and experts (across both science and religion) attempt to mobilize what they understand as the shared practices by which valid knowledge is produced. Those shared practices can be different across science and religion - but not always, note the adherence to formal academic practices and traditions among Western religious experts, and the study of religion in academia - but they are both epistemic practices differently structured, if often incommensurable.
Frankly, this is a terrible argument.
There are two distinct things happening here.
This argument blurs the line between theoretical and practical application. It fails to address the problem that even theoretically the religious position is fundamentally different from the scientific position and it posits that the practical application of the theoretical position for science is equivalent to the practical application for the religion, which is even farther apart than the theoretical in my opinion.
It misattributes the scientific and religious positions in the practical and theoretical stance. Theoretically science doesn't discover "truth". It provides evolving frameworks for observed phenomenon to occur. Your argument, as I understand it, functions exclusively in this area here, where it conflates the experienced lives of individuals with the theoretical underpinnings of religion. Religious theory may claim to try to explain observed phenomenon, but it is incapable of altering it's premise thus it must alter or ignore observed phenomenon to fit the theory.
This is fundamentally different. Practical application of bad "science" may also do this, but it is widely held that this isn't good science.
Finally we get to the practical/practical case, which is where a very pithy point can be made. Practically both science and religion make mistakes, and we shouldn't denigrate religion for the same practical mistakes science makes (or has made).
Which is also just an absurd argument. Just absurd. We should absolutely, 100% hold both accountable for there mistakes and roast them both in the fire. Every single thing science has done that is terrible should be hung out to dry. We should also hold every single terrible thing religion does out to dry as well.
I can't even wrap my head around how absolutely absurd the argument is that we shouldn't absolutely roast this bullshit when we see it.
Bad faith it is. Good to know.
No, I'm just slow. An academic with small kids.