[UA] "I believes in Science!" (but Do You Believe In Love?)

[Kevin Mowery]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Epoch" <msulliva at wso.williams.edu>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 9:03 PM
Subject: Re: [UA] "I believes in Science!"

> The fundamental axiom of science is "what is observed empirically serves
> as a predictor for the future."  That's as unprovable as anything in
> religion, and as much of a leap of faith.  It's also susceptible to
> cultural whims in terms of how much we believe it -- it was /much/ less
> accepted a few centuries ago.

    Well, let's take a reasonable example: dropping a pencil off a table.
Empirical observation says it'll drop toward the earth if it's not stopped.
That happens so consistently I can pretty safely call it a fact.

    Now, if *just once* that pencil hovers in midair, there's a problem.
The obvious thing to do is check to see what stopped the pencil from
dropping.  This is where a lot of skeptics go too far--they either make up
explanations for what they can't explain or they admit that they don't know
what happened, but it can't have been X.

    Let's say that we check everything out, though, and that pencil is just
hovering there for no reason.  That's when a true scientist will have to
admit that there's a slight problem with the commonly-held definition of
gravity and revise it accordingly to account for that pencil.

    That's science.  Faith, on the other hand . . . God made the earth 6,000
years ago.  What about the fossil record that proves the earth is billions
of years old, or physics and astronomy that show that the universe is
somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 billion years old?  All faked by God to
test our faith!

    Science isn't about proof, it's about the ability to disprove.

Kevin Mowery_____________ kemowery at earthlink.net
Mad science comics updated daily at www.narbonic.com


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