Science and love, music, art, etc. (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 17, 2009, 11:31 (5555 days ago) @ George Jelliss

On 16 February I wrote: "Scientists cannot agree among themselves on many basic scientific questions, and they certainly have not come up with "reliable answers" (George) on the topics that form the heading of this thread. Of course, we cannot discount the central role that science has to play in the quest for explanations, but the vast gaps and contradictions in its present state do not seem to me to provide much basis for any kind of belief beyond the agnostic one that we don't (yet) know any of the fundamental truths." - George has come to the conclusion that I am incapable of believing anything unless I have absolute proof. For him, "the fundamentals of science consist of our knowledge of for example, Darwin's principle of evolution by natural selection, Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, Einstein's theory of relativity, Bohr and company's theory of quantum mechanics, and so on and so on. All of this knowledge is well established and used daily to great effect [...] Because there are unknowns and controversies on the boundaries or frontiers of these subjects it seems that DHW is prepared to ignore all these achievements and say we don't really know anything about anything." - In earlier posts, I had pointed out that "in most of the contexts discussed and disputed on this website, what you call "the existing paradigm" in fact does not have a paradigmatic existence outside your convictions." Your response then was: "A scientific paradigm very certainly does exist. Do you deny, say, the atomic theory of chemical structure?" Your answer then had nothing to do with the subjects discussed and disputed on this website, and now in this new post you have once more tried to change the context of the argument. So let me yet again stress, as I did on 11 February, that the fundamental truths we have been discussing are "the existence of God, the paranormal, ethics, aesthetics, religion, evolution etc." Apart from the theory of evolution (parts of which I accept), I have never said a word about any of your other examples and achievements, I would never dream of questioning the scientific truths underlying our modern technologies, and I have never said or even thought that we don't really know anything about anything. But when it comes to the existence of God, with all the phenomena connected to that problem and discussed on this forum, I remain agnostic, and I'm afraid that science does not seem to me to support your faith in unproven theories based on chance or on unknown factors about which even scientists cannot agree. However, I understand your difficulty and can see that in the circumstances, changing the context, attributing thoughts to me that I have never had, and suggesting that I am incapable of believing anything is probably your best method of covering the gaps underlying your own beliefs.