"@ RealityCheck: Thanks, you spoke for me as well about official cosmology. The culture and the illusion created by modern official scientists is that they are formally trained "experts" and only they have the right to speak with authority, because other "experts" exactly like them certify their validity! The whole edifice of "New Physics" is built on Einstein's subjective mathematical idealism and are "proved" by subjective experiments that only look for what they want to see! . Please see my comment as "futurehuman" in the Guardian article (and others in the archive under "futurehuman" for the last few years) :http://www.thegua ...ollider. Thanks.
18 comments
I think if you'd ever actually known any scientists you'd realise exactly how wrong this is. If (and it's a big IF) anyone really is trying to create this impression of authority held by scientists it's a lot more down to pop culture / media portrayal and simplification than it is to the scientists themselves.
The Russell quote from JW sums it up perfectly - the scientists I know typically tend to be reticent about their own authority and very much open about the shortcomings of their own (and by extension pretty much everybody's) knowledge of their area of interest.
But there are quite a few things no sane person with the appropriate level of knowledge and intelligence could possibly doubt, and it's easy to be impatient when people who lack one or more of these things claim they have a better idea of what's going on.
Bigbangcon ....Sounds like a genre-con for bomb & pyrotechnics enthusiasts.
Also, is anti-math a thing, now? Look, I agree that math is really arcane for a lot of folks, myself included....but HATING the stuff is ridiculous!
And WHY MATH?! The Bible's silent on the subject! It's completely irrelevant! What next, gravity?!!!
Yes, only people who are the authority on a subject have the right to speak with authority on that subject.
Why is this difficult to understand?
Making shit up because it suits you doesn't mean you're allowed to argue on the level of an expert that actually understands what they're talking about.
Are people who studied the science for decades somehow less legitimate as experts when you put "experts" in quotes?
You are allowed to be an expert yourself, BUT you are going to have to put your evidence where your mouth is. None of those other guys got a free pass for their ideas; every one of them has had to put up or shut up, and you're no different in that respect.
The other scientists that review and test hypotheses are exactly like them in the sense that they have degrees, and a likely PhD from an accredited course at a respected university. They may disagree with other scientists over the conclusions reached through journal articles, however, if a hypothesis is tested continuously and provides reliable evidence that helps confirm the predictions made more and more scientists will be convinced, as they do have open minds, contrary to fundie stereotypes. Science thrives on discussion, and the testing of each other's ideas; if science was subjective. and involved scientists blindly accepting theories regardless of the evidence, then new research would simply dry up.
@anevilmeme:
Well, the Bible says Pi is 3, therefore those that say otherwise must be wrong.
False conspiracy theories of suppressed knowledge and that scientific consensus is ideological, to promote a false equivalence between good science and grandiose pseudoscientific speculation. Produce and publish good science and it will gain some momentum if it has merit. Not on random web pages, in good peer reviewed journals specializing on the topic, independent of your business. The scientific method, not the propaganda method.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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