Comment on: Re: Is there certainty in science?

Bigthink — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:04:45 +0100

"Truth" is what everyone claims they have. Please consider it a sign of falsity when someone claims that. The Jehovah Witnesses even call their organization quixotically "The Truth." It is so full of fabrications of fact and reality, it could easily be said only to contain particles of the "truth."

What part of "primordial soup" doesn't "verbal pocketplay" understand? You may as well ask where you "soul" or "essence" "luck," "charm," "sense of style" comes from. As these are similarly amorphous concepts, though I'd argue more substantive than the questions posited by "v.p."

"Where did we come from and why are we here?" are questions which have no answer in the abstract sense and deserve more of a place on a sophists podium, like the priests, pastors, vicars, rabbis of every Saturday or Sunday. They are false questions which ask a question the charlatan provides. They are the Big Pharma of philosophy providing a disease for which Big Pharma has a -cin, -ex, -tin -anol medication.

Here are "V.P.s" answers, provided by corroborated research based on the use of the scientific method first suggested by the Muslim scholar Ibn al-Haytham in the first century C.E.: I am here because my parents, like all my predecessors had sex. I am here because my parents nurtured me after I was born and equipped me with the life skills I needed to survive.

Beyond the illusory questions troubling "V.P." science has answered pretty much all the vexing questions facing human civilzations. I would suggest that religion, in its 150,000 years from its crudest origins of supersitions, has answered less questions and helped the human race les (and other species)than the scientific method in its first 1,000 years.
I'll take science ANY day to answer the questions I have. And if science can't answer them right now, my sucessors will enjoy that knowledge. I am happy with the phrase: "We don't know that yet" from science.

Perhaps you "V.P." meant to ask what is the purpose of life. Well, what is your purpose? Mine is to make the best of this life with the resources at my disposal and return the love I get from my family.

Oh, and also to be a damn fine mandolin player as soon as I learn the song "Limerock." (It's a bitch.)

Comment on: Re: Is there certainty in science?

Bigthink — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:15:30 +0100

what about the functional certainty of, say, time or gravity?

and whether it's functional or not, i would like science to answer where we came from and why we are here. so far, it has no satisfying answers. these might not be "functional" pursuits, but if science isn't about finding truth, then who cares about functionality.

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Comment on: Re: Is there certainty in science?

Comment on: Re: Is there certainty in science?