God's Doorway?

[nephorm]

[quote]texasguy1 wrote:
Except that the big bang can not be tested in a manner you’ve listed and that prevents it from being any more predictive than zeus and horny aliens.
[/quote]

I glance at a billiard table, and I see billiard balls in motion. I make a conjecture about how those balls were set into motion, and what the initial conditions were. The fact that I didn’t observe those initial conditions doesn’t change the predictive power of my theory; either my theory holds for all states of the billiard balls or it doesn’t. There are lots of ways my theory can be disproven, with evidence at hand that I have not yet considered.

And why isn’t the big bang testable or predictive? It seems as though many people are testing the limits of the theory through the progress of ordinary science.

Of course a theory would have to have situations where it can be proven wrong, otherwise it would be fact.

Incorrect. Freudian psychology is a theory. It is not falsifiable. If you do not agree to the underlying theory, that is because you have a psychological barrier. Any human behavior can be explained through Freudian psychology. But none of that is falsifiable, because human experience is too complex and the claims of the theory are too broad.

Making theories falsifiable isn’t intentional, it is inherent to the nature of a theory and it prevents one theory from being any more credible than another, even if one sounds more outlandish.

See above. Do you think your alien sperm theory is really more “credible” than the big bang? What do you think credible means?

Both must be relied upon by evidence presented and if neither source of evidence can be proven or disproven, neither theory is better than the other.

Both must be judged by the evidence presented? Is that what you meant? You are correct that we don’t get all the evidence at once. If two theories both account for all the evidence, and both are equally elegant, and both are free of ad hoc reasoning, science will have to say that they are both equally credible. As technology and knowledge advance, we come up with new ways to test those theories. They should have different consequences if they are true, and we can see which consequence results in a given set of circumstances.

defending one over another becomes an issue of semantics and scientific dogma, not good science.

Please define, then, what makes “good science.”

[Lorisco]

[quote]red04 wrote:
Lorisco wrote:

Secondly, here “Observational studies” means looking at current data and extrapolating events in the past from current conditions. At this point in time we are learning new things about our larger universe all the time. As such theories are going to change frequently and often drastically.

If the theories change drastically on a frequent basis that means they are doing an awful job of predicting based on their discoveries. New discoveries don’t always diverge from current predictions, and even minor discoveries that do dispute current evidence only cause changes that are rarely known to the mainstream public. Major discoveries are labeled as such because they don’t come around often, and when they do they cause shock, and widescale change.

This is when you see the frequent adjustments you speak of, as they research a phenomenon and quickly learn new things about it. Then it falls back into the slow gap of making very minute adjustments to hard set theories. The best way to see this in action is in computers, where breakthrough discoveries cause major upgrades to happen and increase work capacity at a fast pace, but gradually slow down as the peak is reached very quickly due to the burst in research.

First, that is my point. It is very funny that someone would be surprised that a theory they “extrapolated” might not be accurate in light of new information. That was my point. If they truly used the scientific method as you indicated, this would occur all the time and they would never be surprised that their current theory was no longer consistent with new data. So the fact that they were surprised indicates to me that they do not regularly re-evaluate and charge their theories based on new data.

You can expect something and still be surprised when it happens, or more importantly “how” it happens. You’re reading much too far into a single word.

If that were true it would be great, but I think you are wishful thinking. I agree that that is how the process is supposed to work, but in reality doubt that they honestly change their minds very often. Again, that is why they were “surprised”.

I don’t even know how to respond to this, if anything, scientists are extremely fickle, riding current bandwagons in the way that research points. If the second coming of Jesus happened tomorrow, they would all be on it.

Not sure why you mention religion because it has nothing to do with the scientific process.

The thread title does happen to be “God’s Doorway?” Religion being discussed was inevitable.

[/quote]

Good post. I would just add that scientists are not the cool calculating totally objective individuals that they are portrayed to be in the media or literature. Many have serious bias. But the bias only comes to light when they get off the current bias bandwagon.

So my point is that there would be more actual science going on if scientists were more open to ideas outside of their current “bandwagon”. Most of the major changes in technology and science have usually come by accident. That is because you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome.

[red04]

[quote]Lorisco wrote:

Good post. I would just add that scientists are not the cool calculating totally objective individuals that they are portrayed to be in the media or literature. Many have serious bias. But the bias only comes to light when they get off the current bias bandwagon.

So my point is that there would be more actual science going on if scientists were more open to ideas outside of their current “bandwagon”. Most of the major changes in technology and science have usually come by accident. That is because you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome.

[/quote]

I somewhat agree, there are definitely scientists and researchers that are very set in their ways, and even in the face of detrimental evidence will attempts to show a resilient factor in their current theory. At the same time, I believe a lot of that aspect of their stubborn nature stems from the way research is handled(in the States at least, I can’t speak for international research much). Grant money goes to the most lucrative studies, and the branches of government that are deemed most important by university governing bodies, congress and presidential cabinet. In a way it feels like a lot of them are backed into a corner, stuck to live out the grant while they apply for new ones on (more than likely) the works that outdated their current research.

I’m sure there are some that just refuse to accept new methodology, but there are those in every field. I didn’t mean to make it sound like science is perfect, human error has it’s fingerprints all over it as well as everything else.