I totally agree. But how many of us are spending time actually using the scientific method on a day to day, hour by hour basis?
We use scientific principles all the time, whenever we're trying to figure something out.
When we are trying to fix something and aren't sure how it works, we'll first try and find out how it does. And we won't just be assuming things because then we won't come up with viable solutions. No, we'll study the thing, come up with ideas and actually test them. And step by step, we'll solve the puzzle and get it fixed.
It's how we roll everyday.
Having said that, obviously we don't personally investigate everything personally. We train and pay professionals to that. And those people even also only work in their small area of expertise.
Knowing how science works, we can trust those results without the need of retesting it personally ourselves.
Also, we actually DO test them in a way. For example, every single GPS receiver in the world, is actually a test of PLENTY of scientific theories that underpin that technology. If those theories are wrong, GPS shouldn't be working.
What percentage of our time are we to be scientists? And as the events of each passing moment come and go and present us with opportunities to ignore or attend, to respond or absorb, to speak or remain silent...to change what it is we were planning to do next...how often are we performing an experiment to test the truth and how often is there simply no experiment that can rationally help us to process what is before us in our conscious experience?
This is again talking about different subjects.
We're not talking about situations where one has to make snap decisions based on limited information.
And for the record, when it comes to such decisions, you ask the question "what is more likely". And the vaue of "likely" will be determined by the data, evidence and knowledge at your disposal.
The answers to questions like these involve more value decisions than they do scientific ones. In fact I suspect our lives are much more filled with a need to sort out what is meaningful or practical than it is what is scientific. Our extrascientific choices and opinions are much more to do with what we understand is true of ourselves and our values and preferences than it is about what is objectively true. Maybe in today's reality with the internet we can actually reach out to our phones and look up an article or even scientific paper that might address a question we have and in turn determine a choice, but for the most part we have to weigh in some other way what we are going to do with the limited resources of time, money and energy that we have to achieve our short and long terms goals to maintain our personal psychological balance, to maintain our relationships, to maintain our home economics and to otherwise secure our needs and the needs of those in our care and in our responsibility.
For me choosing what to eat and when is a major consideration. Science certainly plays a part in that decision, but how that science is understood in a given time and place and how that science is molded by the voices (government and big business) that tell us what is good food shapes what we know and have to choose from. What we experience in our own bodies sometimes against the very dictates of what is claimed as science-based is another factor we all might have to deal with. Then there is the legacy of how food fit into our lives growing up, our sense of family and safety...our sense of self-worth...all these things impact what it is we choose to do and how easy it is for us to choose it. The cost of food that avoids carbs is at least double the price of equivalent foods that doesn't. This takes its toll especially when we have conflicting information and experience and not enough resources or time to sort it all out. Usually we don't wake up until something critical starts to happen and even then that critical warning might not be enough.
Do we just condemn those who can't make the right choices in life? That only works for the dismissive and arrogant. How does one find their way to eating what they know is more objectively right for their bodies? How do they find the strength to overcome a lifetime of incorrect information that is, perhaps, still supported by one's family and local grocery stores in order make better choices? When your body says "yes" but your mind says "no" but your mind rests on the needs and expectations of the body...how to do actually do what some science somewhere says you should?
Religion and religious communities teach us how to focus on what is important in our lives, how to handle temptation, how to reach out for help emotionally when we need to, how to think of stories that remind us of how life is a struggle and that there is hope ahead. Hopefully, although far too often this is not the case, those stories will incorporate the latest science. Or maybe some new dietitian can tell us his or her story of how they weighed 300 lbs but now they run marathons...and not knowing whether these people are telling a good scientific story or not or if we can adapt whatever it is they found in themselves to our own psychological lives, we have to choose whether to try what they recommend.
The best diet gurus are those that are best backed by science...but why haven't they risen to the top and why aren't we all through successive generations simply progressing forward in our overall physical health and well-being? It seems that we have a lot of work to do just to drum up the motivation to find our own way through the bits of science we get immersed in a much more complex world of real choices and social influences. How do we negotiate this flood of reality and make the real choices that effect the change we want...and don't want in our lives?
While well written, none of this has anything to do with scientific questions of existance concerning reality.
The claim "x exists and is responsible for y" is either true or false. It's not something where there isn't really a "correct" answer, but rather pro's and con's and a subjective opinion about what weighs most. Neither is it about "should I do this or that". Neither is it about "did I hurt his feelings?".
No. It's either true or false.
X either exists or it doesn't.
And if yes, it's either responsible for Y or it isn't.
The question is: how do we find out if X exists?
And if we found out that yes, X exists, how do we find out if it's responsible for Y?
These are scientific questions that can, and should, be investigated scientifically.
The problem is that the X and Y that theism likes to insert, are defined in unfalsifiable ways. Meaning that there is not there to investigate.
