Comment by uavals | Hacker News Reader

Comment by uavals | Hacker News Reader

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Disclaimer: not a scientist.

Part1:

For the sake of the argument: Have you seen evidence of scientific fact-x? (For example x=“water is made of H2 + O”)

Since set of “x” is so wast, no matter who you are, for most of “x” the answer will be “NO”. Time, accessible equipment and brain-capability constraints force us to outsource the evidence check to others. (even smartest scientists read papers instead of reproducing all experiments)

Part2:

I would like to distinguish two meanings/aspects of word “Science” used by in various contexts:

- scientific method - hypothesis, experiment, …

- “institution of society” -distinct group in society, view/expectation by the rest of society, education, trusted sources and similar

Methods of science and religion are very different. But as “institutions”, they do have some parallels.

- Both offer basic explanation of reality.

- In both cases people trust stuff written by others.

- Both have consistency if you accept some basic truths.

To sum it up:

I (and most) believe that “carbon has 6 protons“ without evidence. The basis of this belief is trust in science (the institution of society) based on its authority, stated principles&process. But in the end laypeople don’t have evidence for that.

You can e.g. electrolyze water at home and see bubbles. Of course this proves nothing but the fact that water has something in it that makes bubbles at plus or minus, and regularly so. You can add salt/soda and see that it goes faster. All this is not a direct evidence of H or O or what electricity is, but at least some indirect one that can be progressed further, even if you won’t.

You can buy a complex device like a microwave oven or a chemistry lab and experiment with them, checking how they map to scientific knowledge, and asking on physics/chemistry SE about your findings and getting answers from people completely uninterested of fooling you, who are not knowledgeable of what you’re doing besides what you described.

It’s harder with C=6, but by messing with chemicals you can at least make some natural sense of what 6 means in that theory.

Religion at its face value cannot be experimented on at all. Any coincidences (if you find what to experiment on) are so irregular that can only be explained by statistics, even if you won’t. The only way to “study” religious knowledge is to fall for an interpretation of the day, which is always based on some experimental knowledge which others extracted from nature, because these people are interested in converting more adepts from a general population.

You’re correct that there is no direct way to learn and proof to yourself due to materialistic limitations. But when you take plausible interests and statistical phenomena into account, you can easily see yourself what has much more evidential depth and innocence of presupposition.

I trust scientific facts proportional to the evidence I have that these facts are true. This is not the case for faith, wherein disproportionately large amounts of trust are demanded without any evidence.

Our model of the atom allows us to accurately predict chemical reactions. Religion has no predictive power whatsoever, and none of its unique "truth" claims are provable or falsifiable.

People who uncritically trust "science" as regurgitated by pop-culture media are more akin to theists.

This isn’t a good comparison. Science can do something religion can’t: it can predict what will happen ahead of time based on prior knowledge. Religion works backwards to explain why a thing that happened was the will of some god (in the example of Christianity).

This then has practical, real-world implications. Praying harder never seemed to stop a bridge collapsing but a better understanding of physics allowed humanity to build bigger and stronger bridges.

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