What is science based on?

@dickkell (403)
United States
February 17, 2007 8:43am CST
Help me out here - what are the philosophic underpinnings of modern scientific society. Why are logic and reason considerred to be the highest human functions. Why is it supposed science is more accurate than religion? What is the basis for teaching science as the truest form of knowlege? Where did all this start? Thanks!
1 person likes this
3 responses
@kamran12 (5526)
• Pakistan
16 Apr 07
Science is based on systematic dealing of a subject. observation, experiments, results, analysis, postulation and theorisation are all involved in making a scientific reality. Science has proven itself to be most promsing in explaning the outer world in systematic, logical and comprehensible way. I was a theist in childhood and early teenage and became agnostic in my teenage and remained so in most of that part of my life. i was a science enthusiast and believed in scientific power and not in extra human thing. later my reconversion to theism started when i tried to search answers to some of my basic questions and theory of evolution was the first step in my reconversion. it doesn't preclude the origin of life itself but the evolution of life. when i tried to search for the answer to origin, the only thing i found was that it was either a chance or abiogenesis. abiogenesis is completely opposite to biogenesis about which there is near consensus that it's a fact. something we don't believe in normal science. at this point in time i started feeling the limitations of sciences and later i was convinced that science doen't and can not have answers some very basic questions like from where and how we came here? what is our purpose of life? where do we go after? and many questions like that. I figured out that to every existing thing there is a creator so there must be a creator to human beings, this is not as simple as i have put it. you can read my detailed account here. http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/953661.aspx Why people chose science at the cost of religion!? i think there are 4 basic reasons why and how it happened. 1. the same as described above that science provides the answers in most systematic and comprehendible way which are easily testifiable and easy to understand by an average person, on the other hand real belief in GOD really takes a thinking mind, though it's very easy to find HIM (it's only now i can say that after i have already found HIM):-), i really spent 100s if not thousands of my nights thinking about GOD. 2. Problem from within: Stubborn and unyielding Behavior of clergy in each religion against scientific facts which caused people to believe that when one part of religion (as told by clergy, not actually) can be proven wrong by scientific exploration than other parts could also be wrong. Similarly behavior of clergy with scientists at that time when revealed to general public it added fuel to fire and people got fed up. 3. Enlightenment, Economy and development: Following the scientific revolution, there came industrial revolution changing the status of average countrymen thence changing their faith about who provides for better means of life. a form of battle between science and religion, which was never called for, slowly created a sense that religion is backward and unable to provide with good chances and future and rational aproach. 4. The people who don't like religion (may be because of responsibilities, duties or rituals, bindings etc etc) they need something to stick to, whether rational or irrational. They need something they can cling to against religion, so they get hold of science. These very people are the ones who have made and propagated, intentionally or unintentionally, science as a religion. This is but a brief take on about sciences. I do love sciences and i am into it professionally, i only don't like it when it crosses it's own defined premises.
1 person likes this
@kamran12 (5526)
• Pakistan
17 Apr 07
Thanks Dickkell, for best response.
1 person likes this
• United States
2 Mar 07
My writings the Evolution of Religion covers the divide like a bridge between Science and Religion. What can scietifically be proven? What have you read in the Bible that leads you to question the event described? Can you think of one or two?
• United States
3 Mar 07
Did you find my writings? I think you are jumping to conclusions unfounded, because if you really knew me, you would not post to me the words that you wrote. It proves to me you don't fully understand what I'm writing and what I'm offering. Peace and Blessings from knowing the truth. Ever ask if Satan exists?
• Canada
3 Mar 07
actually i have read several of your posts, and just about everyone of them is an atempt to try and convert people in my opinion.
• Canada
3 Mar 07
i had reasons when i decided to go athiest, on occasion i have even returned to religion to check things out. but as these were years ago i have forgotten the reasons. afterall you cant stump principals and vice principals in like grade 5 in a catholic school without solid research. bottom line is i wont just swallow something someone tells me without proof. and i wont surrender my personal freedoms because a preacher tells me i need to in order to go to heaven. the christian religions breed sheeple. here surrender your will and logical reasoning skills to some abstract higher power whom we have no proof actually exists and you will go to heaven after you die. i refuse to surrender either
• Canada
1 Mar 07
here is the short answer, science is more accurate because you dont have to go on the word of some text. in science someone does something documents every step and everything he used and a bunch of other things. and then you can pick up what he wrote down do it yourself and get the same damn reasult. and not only you but anyone else can. you an do something get a result and someone else in timbuckto who hasnt managed to read your document on what you did could do it and get the same result independently. this is why it is more accurate. it can be checked and if your wrong people can tell you and you'd have to admit it because there is solid undeniable independently gathered PROOF. something no holy book has
@dickkell (403)
• United States
2 Mar 07
in theory. In practice, science has it's unquestionable doctrines like any other religion. Evolution, and the fact that despite serious flaws and a general diagreement about the nature and mechanism, has been a litmus test of scientific knowledge for more than a century. "You must be a fool not to acknowledge evolution" they say. It's a scientific fact. Global warming is shaping up to be another such doctrine. Anthropology and paleoarcheology are likewise filled with unquestionable material. Science is good in it's place, but in many arenas, the "scientific" mindset has overstepped itself and it's own internal limitations, and has thus become a de facto religion. Back to the original question, though. I am looking for someoe to point out which philosophers, theologians, scientists and ideas created the modern scientific reliophilosophy.
• Canada
2 Mar 07
dude global warming is real you need only look at the north and south poles to confirm it. the ice coverage there is rapidly going bye bye. ice doesnt just dissappear you know