Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-pcd!hplsla!deanp
From: deanp@hplsla.HP.COM (             Dean Payne)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Science IS a religion.
Message-ID: <5960002@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 15 Mar 88 03:03:18 GMT
References: <73600008@uiucdcsp>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 55

>	Since I first made this realization, two things have happened
>	to further shake my confidence in science as a social institution.
>
>	The first has been the discovery of high temperature super-
>	conductivity--a real discovery that exposes other contemporary
>	physics as a species of bookkeeping and the artificiality
>	of theory.  Really, how much confidence can you have in some
>	arrogant astrophysicist's elucidation of the first millisecond
>	of the history of the universe when a phenomenon like 
>	high-temperature superconductivity wasn't even known.

I have as much confidence as is justified by the evidence.

The good technical discussions often make clear what models and
assumptions are used as a basis for hypotheses or statements.
Unfortunately, when technical mumbo-jumbo is translated into
understandable lay terms, almost all hints that the claims are tentative
or are based on other cast-in-jello results do not survive the
translation.

>	  It's
>	not science, it's religion.

It seems that you have been worshipping science as if it were religion.
Many of us don't.

>	The second was that I found out that many palentologists 
>	don't accept the theory that a meteor striking the earth can 
>	account for a sudden mass extinction of dinosaurs.   I had bought this
                                                             ^     ^^^^^^ ^^^^
>	because there is evidence that a meteor did hit the earth.


If you bought _anything_, you weren't paying attention.  You should have
taken it as a proposal, to sink or swim as more evidence became
available.  Don't be shocked that it appears to have sunk.  And don't be
shocked if it later starts swimming again.

>	But the bottom line is that science is not logical and not
>	impartial but very much driven by politics and personalities,
>	it's a religion complete with dogma and high priests,

You think science is bad?  Take a look at government, business activities,
and organized religion.

>	It still seems very likely to me that
>	future generations might look on science the way we look
>	on alchemy or might even regard it with the disgust we resevre
>	for slavery and racism.

I am already disgusted with the way science is portrayed in the popular
press.  New hypotheses are often portrayed as established fact, with a
certainty not at all present in the technical press.

Dean Payne