Long-time reader Jim Etchison has a series of posts over at Recovering Fundamentalists on the fundamental misconceptions of science:
- Misconception #1: Scientists Have an Atheist Agenda
- Misconception #2: Theories Require “Faith” to Believe
- Misconception #3: Scientists Disagree on Everything
- Misconception #4: A Scientific World View Leads to a Brutal, Bloody Society
- Misconception #5: Scientists Are Arrogant; They Can’t Know Everything
- Misconception #6: Science Takes the Beauty Out of the Universe
What other misconceptions about science are pervasive in fundamentalism?
Misconception #5: Scientists Are Arrogant; They Can’t Know Everything
However arrogant I may be for having learned science, my arrogance pales in comparison with that of someone who claims to converse with the Creator of the universe on a daily basis, as the likes of Rick Warren does.
RE:#6
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked and science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
-Carl Sagan
Don’t give ‘em any ideas. It would appear that the New Age crowd, with their selective reading of Asian religious texts, has already capitalized on awe for the new, improved universe. A charlatan is still a charlatan even if he’s preaching universal tolerance in front of Hubble telescope imagery.
7. Scientists have assistants named Igor.
No, no. That’s one they got right.
Igor, I forbade you to post comments on unreasonablefaith!
You are grounded.
Thorry, Marthter.
Sounds like a stitch up.
The alternative medicine crowd is fast developing a fundamentalism all its own. Check out this list of lies and distortions: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/18-biggest-problems-with-modern-medicine.html#
“1. Modern Western Medicine is based on a narrow “scientific” model, and arrogantly ignores and rejects therapies and entire medical systems that don’t fit this model.” “6. Man is not seen as part of nature, and how what happens in nature effects humans.”
Rubbish. I need hardly add that the author pushes supplements.
I feel like I lost a few IQ points from reading that BS.
8. No belief that the body has a self-healing capacity and no ways to boost that capacity.
compare this with: FDA approves immune-boosting therapy for prostate cancer .
But then, expecting the woo pusher to care about the reality is a bit too much.
Yup. The comments on that post made me crazy; it seems there are plenty of people who may, because their experiences with doctors have not been nurturing, opt to waste money on sketchy therapies.
I would ask alternative medicine advocates for an explanation of why human health and life expectancy have improved dramatically as we have abandoned nonscientific medical systems.
I think that quote could be rewritten as :
“1. Modern Western Medicine is based on a narrow ‘evidence-based’ model, and arrogantly ignores therapies and entire medical systems that do not rely on evidence.”
Well acupuncture for pain relief isn’t alternative anymore. Scientists in Rochester did research and discovered that adenosine is produced when the needles are inserted in the skin which has a pain relieving property. I will admit that this was only in mice.
article is here
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2562.html
The one that bugs the hell out of me is, well… okay, there’s some background information I need to start with.
I was born three months premature, and as a result, have a particular kind of brain damage called Cerebral Palsy. The doctors were, to put it lightly, NOT optimistic about my quality of life — as in, “probably will not be able to sit up, feed, or dress herself.”
I’ve certainly exceeded their expectations, but it just fucking grinds my gears when a faith-head starts going on about how “God” “blessed” me and “gave” me the level of functionality I have. Or how it’s a “miracle” that I survived. (Of course, that’s what they say to my face. Behind my back? Whole ‘nother story!)
And I swear I’m gonna punch the next asshole who says something stupid that pretty much boils down to “disabilities are god’s punishment for SIN”, ESPECIALLY if they’re targeting my PARENTS. I’m adopted. My parents took me on KNOWING I had problems.
Can I nominate my parents for sainthood?
wow. you really should let other people get to you so much.
Who cares if that is how they cope with their situation. You cope with yours your way.
They aren’t insulting your parents. In fact, according to what you said about them, they are exalting them.
The general thought is, “well, they have a disabled daughter, they must have done SOMETHING REALLY BAD to deserve that!”
You really shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand, Lizzie, it makes you sound ignorant.
Are you high? That isn’t the same thing at all. You just claimed people are stating imperfect bodies are a result of a sinful depraved man. Now you are saying they are claiming it was a result of punishment of that individual for sin? Make up your mind.
Christianity does not in any way teach that disabilities are due to a person’s individual transgressions at all. It teaches that the flesh isn’t even the point, but that a person’s spirit and soul are.
your last statement was hysterical especially based on you just trying to slam me on a point YOU AGREED WITH.
What Christianity teaches or doesn’t is utterly irrelevant in face of what the followers actually believe, since it’s the followers that influence us in reality. Fairytales by themselves are just that, fairytales.
That said, I second everything WMDKitty said.
then the issue is with INDIVIDUALS and theism is irrelevant.
She claimed “the general thought”. That’s a broad brush and she claimed “faith-head”. Based on her other statements regarding Christianity, I’d say the assessment is fair that she was stereotyping and calling out the religion and it’s influence on all, more than she was just bitching about one person or two.
So, my point stands.
then the issue is with INDIVIDUALS and theism is irrelevant.
She claimed “the general thought”. That’s a broad brush and she claimed “faith-head”. Based on her other statements regarding Christianity, I’d say the assessment is fair that she was stereotyping and calling out the religion and it’s influence on all, more than she was just ranting about one person or two.
So, my point stands.
Uh, the general thought is that, whether xtianity teaches it or doesn’t.
It’s not one person or two, babylove. It’s a helluva lot of people. Whether you like it or not, whether they’re correct or not, a LOT of faith-heads (and no, not just xtian) think like that. A lot. Hell, I hear things like that and worse daily, by virtue of simply existing. As I said before, I couldn’t give two hamster farts in hell what magic book of fairytales says or doesn’t – believers are what matters and a lot of believers think like that.
Where the hell is she getting the idea that I’m agreeing with her on ANYTHING? And why is she constantly flip-flopping, saying “A”, then saying, “no, I said not-A”?
So, you didn’t state that respect is not default?
And you didn’t state that in a thread to try to counter me. When clearly all it showed is you didn’t even take the time to read my post and only entered to try to challenge me. It made you sound stupid.
I’ve not once flip flopped on my position. Cite it. Cite the flip flop here and now.
Don’t let her bother you kitty. She’s doing it intentionally to f*ck with you. I think we all understood (ed included) what you were saying, and it was a touching story.
Kitty, ignore the tw@ trolling you. Anybody with reading comprehension above three years old can tell that she’s just done her usual misread, twist and lie manoeuvre on your post. Ignore it. She’ll get bored and piss off if everybody just blanks her.
stay on topic or talk about me. if you chose to talk about me, it is YOU trolling to derail.
Shut the fuck up, it’s not your blog, and you don’t set the rules.
that was a rule. it was a statement of fact. a choice. and the end result of said choice.
that was not a rule. it was a statement of fact, a choice. and the end result of said choice.
I think she set a new rule for Lizzy.
I’ll try — but I get really annoyed at idiocy.
because clearly you trying to challenge me by saying “respect is not default” was not idiocy.
/sarcasm
Can I star a poll?
ED, troll or functional illiterate?
@ Francesc:
Troll who thinks she’s a lot cleverer than she really is. Illiterate is a given.
@Francesc — Troll, no doubt.
Seconded.
How is it exalting her parents, who no doubt have put in long stressful hours to help their daughter, to attribute the results of their care to an imaginary sky daddy?
I just wish people would realize how rude it is to stand in front of firemen, police, doctors, and others who do the heavy lifting, and instead of thanking them for lives saved, etc. thank god and his praying minions.
I think we’ve found another misconception about science- God makes scientists do good things, because left to their own devices, scientists would just create “satan bugs” and vivisect babies.
Yeah.
I always want to yell “no, your favorite sky fairy didn’t do diddly squat; my mother and my doctors and fuckin’ SCIENCE did it.” Then say a couple bad names.
What about something like
“Yes, the human sacrifice my mother did honoring Locki did really work”?
Hah, I’ll keep it in mind for next time :D
The good news is that scientists are now able to create the perfect purest life from scratch that does not inherit SIN unlike cloning which does inherit SIN.
Holy genome, Batman! I hadn’t considered the metaphysical implications of Venter’s work. But then, I never consider the metaphysical implications of anything.
Scientists can now actually create a spiderman.
Hm, interesting point. Except that of course this new life was created by sinful humans, which means our sin rubs off on it.
To someone who believes in Original Sin, sin is like cooties. It is the modus operandi of such people to blame every bad thing on us humans. Everything we accomplish is tainted – unless we do it for the glory of God. That includes synthetic life, which, anyway, is sinful all by itself to a fundie.
Oh, Kitty! Wow. You took some time to share important information about your life in order to explain your experiences and your way of thinking, only to have it attacked. That sucks! I got what you are saying… that you are “lucky” to have gotten what you got, no matter how disruptive it is to your life… and that religious nutjobs like to say BOTH that it is because of original sin that flesh is “fallen” AND that your parents are somehow to blame for your disability. Which we all know is bunk.
Yet despite your sharing, it was taken out of context by a person whose inability to express anything other than contempt makes her attack on you both unfair and ridiculous.
Some people are just really really sensitive about what they believe in. Any slight, truthful or not, must be dealt with.
“God” “blessed” me and “gave” me the level of functionality I have. Or how it’s a “miracle”…”
Where did you claimed people are stating imperfect bodies are a result of a sinful depraved man? Why does Lizzy has a need to bring about such accusation on you?
The general thought is, “well, they have a disabled daughter, they must have done SOMETHING REALLY BAD to deserve that!”
You are right on. Her hatred was unfounded.
To answer the question that was asked after the original post before the discussion wandered off into the brush, the major misconception I see is the idea that a ‘theory’ is the same as some crackpot guess. I know ‘hypothesis’ is a big scary word, and I suspect that many f^#$almentists know what it means and know what theory means, but they throw out “It’s only a theory” with no respect to the time and energy that were expended to get to the point of being able to call it a theory.
A huge one: “Science changes over time; what we believe now will be laughed at in one hundred years.”
That is extremely frustrating because it not only discounts all current science because we will eventually improve it, but it even goes so far as to insult all former science by laughing at it. I do not laugh at Bohr because his model of hydrogen was imperfect. I do not laugh at Darwin because his model of evolution was imperfect. I do not laugh at Newton because his model of mechanics was imperfect. And these scientifically illiterate fundamentalists should stop laughing at Einstein because his theory of relativity was most likely imperfect. It’s just damn disrespectful.
True. While scientists may have gotten things wrong in the past, they had reasons for their ideas. Ptolemy’s epicycles or Copernicus’s heliocentric universe weren’t just stabs in the dark.
Another thing: scientific mistakes aren’t simply wrong answers — they’re productive. Scientists learn from their mistakes.
Every time I hear that “science got things wrong in the past so we shouldn’t listen to scientists since they may be wrong too” line I really want to grab the idiot and bang their head against the wall until they get into their thick skull that the ability to modify your ideas according to new evidence is not a weakness it’s a fuc*ing strength.
Anyway, the huge wrongs, such as spontaneous creation, flat earth and the geocentric model were discarded as soon as people started employing what we now think of the scientific method and replaced trying to interpret buybull verses with experiments and observations as a way to figure things up.
Using that same logic, religion got things wrong in the past, so we shouldn’t listen to today’s theists since they may be wrong, too.
That’s the point. When a scientific theory is found to be wrong then it’s modified to accommodate the new facts. When religion find that their dogma is wrong they insist that it’s not and that it’s reality who got it wrong.
The difference between religion is science is that science sometimes get it wrong but religion always get it wrong.
And when science gets it wrong, science goes about to get to it right.
This has always bugged me as well.
People forget that while Newton’s model was imperfect, the model that replaced it was based on Newton’s model.
People also forget that Newton’s model, while incomplete, was a highly useful approximation to reality, and a big step in understanding the world. Newton’s model was replaced, but it was never *wrong*, per se. It was simply describing a special case, i.e., it successfully explained the motion of objects at low relative velocity to each other.
Newton’s physics may be incomplete, but they’re still good enough to get you to the moon and back. They even suggested the possibility.
Here is a good one: “Facts are 100% true and theories are just guesses.”
“Science is drawing us apart from nature” (or something to the effect that technology is bad and nature is good).
I’d love to see people who say that go a whole year will meds, plumbing, etc., and see how much they like nature.
*without, not will.
I realize this isn’t related to fundies as much, more to the New Ager woo.
A year, I’d like to see them go a whole day without using any technology more advanced then hand tools.
Yeah.
When people tell me that I always think, “fine, next time you need an aspirin? I won’t give you one.” It irks me because if “nature” had its way with me, I’d be dead. I’m utterly thankful to hardworking scientists because I’m alive, and people wave it off like it’s nothing.
Grr.
About Adam and EVE how did the snake aquire language? How did the snake vocalize language without a voice box? Most interesting is God instructed Adam to name the animals including the snake .However since there was no sin until Adam disobeyed Gods commandment not to eat the forbidden fruit.How is it possible that the snake could connive to trick Adam unless God was the pulling the strings? The snake was conspiring before the arrival of sin.God all knowing all powerful must have known the outcome before hand.Or was God in cahoots with the devil all along?One cannot make the arguement that Satan was behind this deception because the serpent had been named by Adam in accordance with Gods instructrions.This action gives God good reason to be a big bully..
I love it when a xtian claims that atheists are “close minded”.
“You have to open up your mind to other things. Don’t be so close minded about new ideas.”
As if religion is a new idea, it pre-dates civilization.