Re: How do I talk to this person?
- From: wf3h <wf3h@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 6 May 2007 05:20:49 -0700
JQ wrote:
A few days ago I was talking to my aunt about random things, and
happened to mention ID. I said that it annoyed me that some people
couldn't understand that ID was not science -- and her reply was that
if they want to call it science then it is, to them, science. She then
insisted that science was anything that people wanted to define as
such, and-- this really confused me -- said 'evolution is not science
-- it's a theory'.
i wonder if folks like this think words have meaning. does the word
'aunt' have meaning?
if so, then is ballet dancing science? is crocheting the same as auto
mechanics? why not?
science means something. and 'theory' means something. science has
theories. that's one of the jobs that science does....creates
theories. that's why it's not ballet dancing.\\
Obviously she has some very confused ideas about what science is. When
I said that there is in fact a proper definition for science (eg, you
can't call something science if you can't apply scientific method to
it), she flat-out refused to believe me. Her evidence was that some
scientists are testing things like ESP (even I can come up with a
scientific test for ESP, it isn't that hard).
why isn't testing an idea part of the scientific method? how does she
think science gets done?
She then went on to say that reality is different for different
people and (this bit confused me) that what is fact for one person may
not be fact for another.
hmm....wonder how many people would be willing to test this by
stepping out of a 10th story window. if there are different facts of
nature then someone should fly up instead of splatting on the
sidewalk.
i suppose it's part of the intellectual weakness of our age...we don't
know our history. thus religious fanatics gain a hearing pretending
religion is a new idea instead of an old one.
we pretend all ideas are created equal without realizing SOME ideas
are false. creationism is false. religion as an explanation for the
world is false. we can't always say what is TRUE but we can say waht
is false.
She held up a brown object and asked me if it
was red. I said it wasn't. She said that, to some people with a
certain type of colour blindness, the object would appear red
(actually there probably was red in it, but I wasn't bringing this up
because it would confuse a woman who didn't know what an
electromagnetic wave was). She couldn't seem to understand that this
was a flaw with the observation equipment, not reality.
wonder if she considers her comment a fact...but it CANT be because
facts are different to different people, right? so if she's wrong,
then she's right....and if she's right, she's wrong.
thus a contradiction...
So I need help. Is there anybody out there who might know 1) what
exactly my aunt thinks science is and 2) how I can explain it to her?
physical reality exists. the method to investigate this exists. it's
not ballet dancing. it's not religion. that method is called science.
and, given the fact it's transcultural, it's not dependent on what
individuals think
.
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- How do I talk to this person?
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