How reliable is science? (The limitations of science)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Thursday, April 12, 2012, 01:54 (4607 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: Tony has at least one thing backwards however. If you read Darwin, he started from the evidence, and worked forward from there. He had no intention of eliminating God at all, and all evolutionary theory is ultimately expanded upon Darwin's base. It *IS* looking at the evidence, only from an extremely conservative empirical perspective. I've met Jewish and Muslim doctors and scientists that have no problem with evolution as it is taught today. And it isn't because they feel bullied. 
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> Where Dawkins goes wrong, isn't in terms of science, its in terms of his normative stance that the scientific perspective alone takes precedence. That's something for an individual to decide, not Dawkins.-I wasn't referring to Darwin so much. Despite how it may seem, I have every reason to believe the Charles Darwin studied the evidence and formed a hypothesis that could be tested in good faith and in the standards of good science. But then, Darwin, like many scientist of his generation, was independently well-to-do, so he was not under the publish-or-parish system that lends itself so well to bad science. -That being said, consider that since there came to be a general acceptance of Darwin's Hypothesis, and it gained the status of Theory, that any dissenter from the ideology is figuratively burned at the stake as a heretic in the scientific community. With the current status of scientific research, this puts them in a completely untenable situation. They can not receive funding if they pursue any but the orthodox lines of research, they may expand upon it but funding would never be approved for someone trying to dislodge it. If they should manage to secure funding, their papers will not get published, or if they do they will be vilified by Dawkins and his ilk as disigenuous and dishonest 'religidiots' trying to prove some fundamentalist ideal of young earth creation. If they are accepted by some creationist branch who has a vested interest in trying to prove a creationist ideology, they are under pressure to produce results conforming to the desires of the person paying the bill. -So tell me, Matt, how can we trust the science under these conditions? Do we turn a blind eye to all the backbiting and backroom politics? Do we trust that scientist are less human than we are and all work on altruistic principals which holds monetary concerns as of no import? How can we trust the institution when they have repeatedly buried the work of scientists who do not conform to the orthodoxy? Some time back I linked an article regarding a female archaeologist who ran into this problem because her discovery called into question common historical orthodoxy. No one will publish her works despite the fact that all of her findings were independently verified. And soon after the incident, no one would fund her work further either. Is this the ideal of science that you hold so dear?

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.