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Differences between research reports and religious scriptures?

Audie

Veteran Member
Just because machine complexity arises from intentional design doesn't mean complex "design" can't arise unintentionally, by the natural, unguided mechanisms science has been describing for a hundred years or more. Again, you're arguing from incredulity.

Your proposal: Goddidit, isn't an explanation. It doesn't propose a mechanism, much less test it. It's an untestable assertion of agency. You're comparing apples and oranges.

What evidence do you have that complexity can't arise naturally? Science has volumes of observed examples of this, with testable, falsifiable, explanations of the mechanisms involved. Where do you find fault in these?

Waterfalls are designed to get water from up to down.
I have heard about that.
 
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HonestJoe

Well-Known Member
I do not think that is correct, HonestJoe, there are religious views that go hand-in-hand with science.Perhaps you have not come across them.
There can certainly be some moving in the same direction but in the context of the OP, comparing scientific reports and religious scripture specifically is just wrong.
 

Jim

Nets of Wonder
There are no similarities. Scientific research has nothing to do with religion and scripture has nothing to do with science. There is no justification to even talk about them in the same context.
One is reasonable and evidence based. The other built on sand; a product of ignorance and personal incredulity.
You mean they are about different things.
... comparing scientific reports and religious scripture specifically is just wrong.
The similarity that I’ve been discussing is in how people misuse them, and actually I’m not sure that anyone is denying that. I was comparing how people misuse scriptures and research, not the scriptures and research themselves. Seeing people telling me how different they are, started me wondering how different they really are.
 
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PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
A good research report gets put foreward to be brutally ripped to shreds through the crucible of peer review.

The Bible won't survive that process.

Depends what you mean by "process"
The basic history of the bible is slowly emerging from the archaeologist's trowel.
The notion that the universe created itself from nothing and for no reason has
more problems than saying something outside of the universe created it.
And the process of "proof" is not a corporate but individual one - the bible says
that if you don't prove its precepts for yourself then you don't understand it.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Depends what you mean by "process"
The basic history of the bible is slowly emerging from the archaeologist's trowel.
The notion that the universe created itself from nothing and for no reason has
more problems than saying something outside of the universe created it.
And the process of "proof" is not a corporate but individual one - the bible says
that if you don't prove its precepts for yourself then you don't understand it.

Ha. More of it is being buried by archaeology or other
research than is being "uncovered".
People used to think exodus and the flood were real history.

Your facile analysis of theoretical astrophysics convinces
nobody but yourself.

The bible proves itself? All "sacred writings" have
self promoting passages.

Seems to me t hat among those who have read it,
the "believers" are the ones who understand
the bible the least.

I can illustrate that with easy concrete examples,
while I think it would be quite a trick to show that
those who have "proved it to themselves" have
any actual insights.
 

Samantha Rinne

Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
A good research report gets put foreward to be brutally ripped to shreds through the crucible of peer review.

The Bible won't survive that process.

Peer review is garbage.

Why would any sane person submit their idea to the opinion of a mob? The idea that an intellectual consensus equals a correct answer, is hardly new. Years ago, the idea was that sickness resulted from the body being clogged with gunk, so people were given enemas, or bled out, or sucked by leeches. There was even a fad of using sterilized tapeworms to manage body weight. Honestly, the last one might be good for America's morbid obese, but this is neither here nor there. The point is, this notion was wrong on a fundamental level, and people wasted away from having their vitality literally drained away.

Or how about Code films? Some group of people decided that only wholesome films could play, and movies of this era were mostly boring. The thing is, years have passed and if you look at films today, the current market system has made a sort of Code of its own. Can't be politically incorrect (or overly edgy for that matter), while the 70s to mid 90s (Fast Times At Ridgemont High) had full nudity modern films have no breasts or sexual organs even in so-called R films, having phased any real sex into X rated (which never shows). The most interesting films were literally those where society wasn't concerned about eirher public morals or political correctness but producing a cool movie.

When consensus rather than personal opinions reigns, we get stagnation.

Here's another good example: The average book cannot be published with over 100,000 words. Supposedly, this is because after this length, a work is considered overwrought, and is immediately rejected by review. The thing is, a decent epic needs to be as long as it needs to be, and a decent trilogy, if self-contained will most likely be longer.
Btw, the actual reason that a book must be this length? To save publishing costs, and maximize prifit. They also streamline book content so nothing is too shocking. But here's the problem: None of those books will be remembered in 20 years. Books that market well tend to be bland. On the other hand, The Communist Manifesto, The Bible, The Quran, Ayn Rand, Terry Goodkind, all of these are authors or books that had a profound effect on society. At the very least, they seem to be in every used book store.

The Bible would not get published under the current review process. Nor would the Quran. Nor the Analects, nor the Vedas, nor the Tripitaka. The Tao te Ching would make it, but only because it's like 100ish pages.

And yet these books receive worldwide acclaim. The Great Gatsby fits under this word count, yet it has nothing to say. The characters are boring cliches, and the entire book is about a bleak period of history where nobody had any spiritual drive.
 
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Audie

Veteran Member
Peer review is garbage.

You pretty much didnt need to say any more after this,
as you only went on to show you dont know anything
about how things are done in those distant ivory towers
you've never entered.

Academic journals frequently post their own articles
on problems with peer review. It is no big secret that
it is not perfect. No human endeavour is. See
"religion" under that heading!

Peer review is the best system that we've been able
to devise. If you know how to improve it. by all
means make a constructive effort.

So far it is your comments are what is garbage,
not the best system that scientists world wide have
been able to devise.

Your remarks are on the level of those who say
that ToE is a big fat lie, thereby, of course, presenting
themselves as knowing more than any scientist on
earth. As if.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
Peer review is garbage.

Why would any sane person submit their idea to the opinion of a mob? The idea that an intellectual consensus equals a correct answer, is hardly new.

Quite right. We should ask the nearest religious congregation for their opinion (Oh ****, is that a mob?), or if that fails to show any appreciable measure of truth then the nearest religious authority will do - like the Pope, or some other similar with less qualifications to babble forth on whatever. If people with intense knowledge of a particular subject (and qualified as such) are not suitable to check a hypothesis who the **** are?

Baby out with the bathwater comes to mind. :rolleyes:
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Quite right. We should ask the nearest religious congregation for their opinion (Oh ****, is that a mob?), or if that fails to show any appreciable measure of truth then the nearest religious authority will do - like the Pope, or some other similar with less qualifications to babble forth on whatever. If people with intense knowledge of a particular subject (and qualified as such) are not suitable to check a hypothesis who the **** are?

Baby out with the bathwater comes to mind. :rolleyes:

Well, I quit after the first line, but you put the second one
in so lets look at it...

The idea that an intellectual consensus equals a correct answer, is hardly new.


That is so mixed up that it is not even wrong!
I wont try to untangle all of the confusion in it,
but will comment that peer review is not about
whether someone got a "Correct answer".

I dont need to tell you what it is for, and our
hero wont learn it from me, so I wont elabourate.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
I suspect that - The idea that an intellectual consensus equals a correct answer - seems like a voting system to her, when it shouldn't be, but should at least throw up all likely objections and all possible alternatives. And in many cases, different opinions do just remain when there is no consensus view forthcoming. What happens with religious texts? That which suits the agenda of the religion surviving and thriving?
 

Audie

Veteran Member
I suspect that - The idea that an intellectual consensus equals a correct answer - seems like a voting system to her, when it shouldn't be, but should at least throw up all likely objections and all possible alternatives. And in many cases, different opinions do just remain when there is no consensus view forthcoming. What happens with religious texts? That which suits the agenda of the religion surviving and thriving?

Our hero may not be aware that a researcher will be
at some pains to include all the problems, alternate
possibilities etc that he can think of, in the paper
he is submitting for review.
 

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
Sometimes when I post about people misusing research reports in the same harmful ways that they use religious scriptures, people promoting and defending science beliefs respond by pointing out differences between science and religion, which I don’t see as relevant to what I’m saying. I’ve started wondering though, about how much and what kinds of differences there actually are, between research reports and religious scriptures. Here are some differences that I see:
- Imagining any aim or purpose behind anything that happens is is stigmatized in the sciences.
- Maybe as a consequence of that, research reports mostly use mechanistic models and metaphors, and sometimes get tangled up in trying to explain how things could happen randomly and accidentally.
- There usually isn’t any doubt about who are the authors of a research report, although actually there have been false claims sometimes.
- Research reports are mostly about what happens, and how it happens, as a result of what happens before that. Religious scriptures are mostly about how to live our lives, to bring out the best possibilities in people, in society and in the world around us.

It seems ironic to me for people to imagine the universe as being like a machine, and at the same time scoff at people for imagining that it was created by someone with some purpose in mind.

Academia is great, science is great, except both institutions have left LOVE off their books. Academia talks constantly now about racial and social JUSTICE. Science talks about being without bias. The bias of "let's do science or academia in LOVE" is a HEALTHY bias.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
But they did survive that process. Not only that process, but also the process of many people being tortured and killed for promoting them.

Whatever happens to people will have nothing to do with the validity or dismissal of the subject in question.

It's apples and oranges. One is peer review and the other is wanton suppression.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
The notion that the universe created itself from nothing and for no reason has more problems than saying something outside of the universe created it.
And the process of "proof" is not a corporate but individual one - the bible says
that if you don't prove its precepts for yourself then you don't understand it.
Tell me the problems. Is science hiding anything? OTH, what can you say other than 'Goddidit'. You may have proven it to yourself, but do not expect others to ditto your line. We find infinite holes there.
 
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