A True Scientist [Spirituality & Religion]

@Pherick Have you ever heard the story of the two Texans?

@BlueMetalChick I don't think I have?

@Pherick It's an analogy used to compare logic against backwards logic. It goes like this. There's two Texan guys who live next door to each other. The first is a skilled marksman who enjoys practicing riflery. The second claims to be an even more talented sharpshooter than the first but he hasn't been able to prove it yet. So one day the first Texan challenges his neighbor to a shooting contest to see who is the most accurate and precise. They decide to use the side of a condemned barn building as their backdrop. The first Texan paints a set of targets on the side of the barn and begins shooting. His results are fantastic and he proves that he is indeed a very accurate shooter. The second Texan steps up and begins shooting the barn at random, and then once his gun is out of bullets, he walks up to the barn and paints the targets on with the bullseyes centered right around the bullet holes he made. He proudly declares that he is the better shooter because every single shot he fired was a dead center hit.

That's the equivalent of drawing your conclusions before doing your experiment.

@MalteseFalconPunch Well that's convenient. It was fresh on your mind then.

@Pherick You'd be wrong.

@GodSpeed63 Well you do claim that science suggests the existence of a creator, on a regular basis, so I'd wager you don't have a good grasp on what a scientists is, or what science itself is.

You once again you show yourself completely uninformed? John Lennox is a mathematician specialising in group theory, and a philosopher of science. He is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford University. So not a scientist in your eyes? . @Pherick

@Speedyman Math is not science.

@Speedyman He may me be scientist WHEN and WHILE researching on things on themselves.
And may have have his own religious believes, based in faith.
But when and while asserting about religión, if he looks for validation for it in science, he is not being a scientist at all.

@SW-User It´s not exerimental science, true.
Though this, the old debate resurfaces from time time whitin serious philosophy of science.

@Speedyman Dembsky, by example, haves a formal high academic degree.
But as pointed by both Dave Wolpert (a friend of mine BTW) and Macready (No Free Lunch Theorems) "his math is written in jelly" and "His philosophical conclutions are non sequitur fallacies".

@CharlieZ Okay, now Wolpert is an impressive name drop.

@SW-User When naming Wolpert and his opinion I was pointing less on his impressive personal merits in math and science and more on his serious knowledge on what Dembsky uses with irresponsible frivolity.

@CharlieZ This is normally the kind of thing I intentionally don't pay attention to because it gives me a headache in minutes. Mathematics seems to have an unfortunate history of people like him, including Newton and Descartes, which then get used by apologists appealing to authority.

@GodSpeed63 Actually no, I would not be. You can be a mathematician and a philosopher and NOT be a scientist, quite easily. Actually, I would argue that philosophy is quite the antithesis to being a scientist.

@Speedyman Again you jump to insults when you have no ability to hold a civil debate. Just because he has many degrees and is a professor does not label him a scientist.

by its simplest definition a scientist is a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences.

A mathematician and philosopher is not an expert in a physical or natural science.

@SW-User I hope that when you say "people like him" you are pointing to Dembski and not to Wolpert.
While Dembski is a clown, Wolpert stands for a scientific worldview and attitude.

Yes, math haves some heavy historical bagage to be aware of.
That unfortunate peculiarity is less related with math itself than with schools of thought that ultimatly equate (in various ways) science with Epistemology.
To summarize, that science is not about the world but is about what we know and say about the world, which is wrong.
Descartes, a notorious late scholastic dualist, did good math but had ill philosophic assumpttions.
Even some other people on the science "stage" (like Popper and Kuhn) held idealistic twisted views that precede or support the sad and poor postmodern thinking.

"Eppur si muove"

@CharlieZ sorry, yes I meant Dembski, I should have been more clear.

@Pherick I trend to agree with you a lot.
But best science philosophers are or were also bold scientists, like Mario Bunge when researching physics with Bohm. And also bold other ones.
What collides with science is "armchair" philosophy and, of course, rethorical "logic".
See Francis Bacon (at the born of scientific thinking) defeating scholastic / aristotelic foundations of antirealist thought.

@CharlieZ I totally agree that you can be both a scientist and a philosopher. To me, its the practice of science that gives that title meaning.

If you do math all day and philosophize about theorems and such, you can be a great person, professor, etc but not a scientist.

If you actually practice the scientific method, they can pretty easily give you the title of scientist. You give Bunge as an example, just looking over his published works, I am not sure if personally, I would call him a scientist. Most of his work seems to be centered on the philosophy of science, but not actually doing science.

I guess that's my personal litmus test, is someone talking about, studying, philosophizing about science or are they actually doing science? One is a scientist and the other is not. I would say for some the line is a bit blurry, but for most, its quite clear.

@Pherick Bunge is a prominent science philosopher.
But he had in his backgrond DECADES of BOLD working on physics.
Not at all the only one research, was with David Bohm, on quantum "mechanics" (the De Broglie–Bohm one), perhaps the only formulation that will survive the confirmation of gravitational waves.

But as a strong disclaimer, the unity of Science is NOT methodologic AT ALL.
Each science haves it´s own "object" and so different inferential tools.
Unless somone equates method with formal proving (Popper like), which is a total nonsense (to prove is necessary but FAR NOT enough to define Science).

As another note, the explanatory facet of any´ and each scientific theory is intrinsic to science. And it´s it conceptual frame. An inferencial reflection on what the other aspects of the formulation means.
This, not only nor mainly for educational purposes, but as a guide and foundation of Science never ending intent to understand the material unity of the Universe.

@CharlieZ Do you a see difference between theoretical physics and applied physics? I would argue a theoretical physicist is not a scientist, more of that science philosopher. Whereas applied physics would be the piece of that pie that is actually conducting scientific experiments.

Oh dear! Maths lies at the basis of science. @SW-User