A few years ago I picked up these silly Christian tracks from my church. I was reading this one about an atheist professor arguing with a creationist and they're throwing discussions back and forth to undermine science's integrity. This particular page stumps me.
Is there some truth to this?
www.google.com gluon
Gluons and "god" serve the same function here. They're both just gap fillers. But contrary to what jack chick would have you believe, this doesn't make god exist
>nobody has seen them so they cant exist
Just like gods.
The theory of the strong nuclear force(gluons) can be used to make very useful predictions, there's an entire area of physics called quantum chromodynamics that deals with this. It's a much more useful theory than "God is holding the nucleus".
I'm christian by the way, but this little book is full of shit.
Science should not deal with "God is doing this" theories since those theories have 0 predictive power. Those kind of christians have the point of view that science should deal with what is real(scientific realism) so they actually believe that science should care about God. Rejecting scientific realism and focusing in creating useful theories is my position(also the position of Stephen Hawking), science is useful and we should not lose that, science should not care about metaphysics.
>implying gluons and gravitons exist
holy shit atheists BTFO
Wow, if he's going to use this argument for god i wouldn't be surprised.
Funny he never heard 'bout argument from ignorance.
Even if gluons weren't observable by any means it wouldn't be without reason to assume some other attractive force is at play, and pluging god into this hole explains nothing. This can and could be said about any unexplained phenomena through out history.
>science should deal with what is real(scientific realism)
That's what science does. If they want something to call god, they can have pantheism.
>he thinks science deals with what is real
you have to be 18 and have graduated high school to post here
>What is the strong nuclear force
Go back to school. Scientific realism is not a strong philosophical view and most of it's supporters only do so because they were never exposed to opposite views. Equating science and truth is very common for young people and believing that any criticism of this position is linked with religious belief is common for uneducated young people. The question "is science capable of achieving truths" is an epistemological one and just accepting that it does without strong philosophical backing is stupid.
If athesism is true then mathematics is false due to the proof of incompleteness from Godel.
unprovable != false
One of the most famous problems with scientific reallism is the underdetermination problem:
"let us call the relevant, overall sets of scientific beliefs “theories”; different, conflicting theories are consistent with the data; the data exhaust the evidence for belief; therefore, there is no evidential reason to believe one of these theories as opposed to another. Given that the theories differ precisely in what they say about the unobservable (their observable consequences—the data—are all shared), a challenge to realism emerges: the choice of which theory to believe is underdetermined by the data."
But underdetermination is only the tip of the iceberg. There are more powerful arguments against scientific realism.
I don't think ad hominem after ad hominem is a strong philosophical argument either.
Yes, I used ad hominem. But that's because it's crystal clear that you're fresh out of high school(or still in high school). If you want real arguments against scientific realism check this page:
plato.stanford.edu
It's about philosophy and that's what you need to argue in favour or against this position. If you don't like to read you can also check this YouTube series:
youtube.com
In the comments you'll see that triggered scientificists are a pain in the ass for anyone doing real philosophy nad that may change your position even more than the content of the videos.
A lot of scientists get really mad at philosophy when their dogmas are attacked, but I hope that you will eventually see that philosophical illiteracy is not something to boast about but actually a problem that plague academia.
>But that's because it's crystal clear that you're fresh out of high school(or still in high school).
Well first of all, I'm not the person you initially responded to. Second the irony of arguing against scientific realism while claiming it's "crystal clear" that someone is fresh out of high school based on an opinion is staggering. Is there any other possible model that would explain why someone would give this opinion? It's crystal clear you don't have the intellectual maturity to discuss such issues rationally.
Also, holding those beliefs are ok, a lot of very intelligent people I know were scientific realists at some point. But you need to understand that "science = reality" and "everything else = stupid" is not actually a very strong epistemological position. Not being skeptical about science itself is a problem. Here is a video about another idea:
Gluons are the force carriers holding together the quarks in a proton/neutron. The force which holds different protons together is mediated by mesons which were first observed experimentally in 1936. So there is, in fact, no truth to it.
>t. someone who just browsed wikipedia
The Stanford Encyclopedia does not nearly have the one sided view you do. It gives counters to both sides of the argument and counters to the counters and doesn't imply anywhere that "most philosophers" are anti-realist.
My own opinion is that most of this, like all philosophy, is semantics being given undue value. Reality is what produces data and science is how we attempt to describe and make sense of that data. That there might be multiple competing descriptions does not somehow imply that the reality doesn't exist. That's it.
>Second the irony of arguing against scientific realism while claiming it's "crystal clear" that someone is fresh out of high school based on an opinion is staggering
Relying on my on senses does not imply scientific realism. The idea that all scientific antirealism implies that our senses and intuition are not reliable is simply not the case. When I said that the previous guy is clearly young and fresh out of high school I was using only my senses and intuition.
>Is there any other possible model that would explain why someone would give this opinion?
Yes, there is the model in wich I'm actually a demon hunter and calling someone a high schooler is actually a method described in the necronomicon to kill demons, crystal clear has another meaning in the lenguage of the great old ones. But you'll never know since the information you have until now underdetermines the final conclusion. The second theory may seem crazy but it is still matched by evidence(the evidence being a bunch of comments in a mongolian anime board) and thus you can't pin down wich of the theories is the real one only based on the evidences alone. This is a weird version of the underdetermination problem.
>It's crystal clear you don't have the intellectual maturity to discuss such issues rationally.
Sorry, mr intellectual mature, I'll try my best regardless.
It's mostly pions and other mesons actually, which are very commonly detected in all kinds of contexts.
There is also some evidence for glueballs but that's all rather fuzzy.
>Relying on my on senses does not imply scientific realism.
No, but claiming that your explanation of what you're senses perceive is "crystal clear" is exactly what you argued against. I didn't question your senses. For someone who claims to be philosophically enlightened you don't appear to be very good at this.
this video is silly. you can just cross out faith and say that all knowledge is based off of assumptions, and no one can argue with that. The fact that observations agree as widely as they do and that certain technologies work in the way they do lends credence, but not idealized truth, to the claims of science.
If you can't settle an idea by experiment or observation, then it's not worth discussing.
>If you can't settle an idea by experiment or observation, then it's not worth discussing.
So, is pure mathematics not worth discussing? When topologists talk about objects in n-dimentions that can't be experimented on nor observed are they discussing bullshit?
either believe in a god and accept internal contradictions which belief in a god yields, or attempt to avoid contradiction and spend a lot of time attempting to mathematically describe observations.
a scientific approach can lead to new technologies and change. a religious approach favors stability and traditional practices.
it doesn't matter which you choose, you will die regardless. do what makes you feel better.
lmao I just got handed the "This was your life!" one on my way back from class. I don't understand how people, christian or not, would entertain these chicktracts as legitimate methods of converting people. The one I got handed was literally just panels expressing "but muh possibility you might be wrong and go to hell!" The guy who even handed them to me seemed embarrassed to be standing out on the sidewalk handing those out
you can construct differential equations which are constructable via analog computer whose solutions space is a topology like that of which you speak. i actually a agree with the sentiment that Mathematics is not inherently testable, but you picked a bad example.
side note: an analog computer is an electrical feedback system such that the output voltage of the system is the solution to some pre-defined differential equation. they were more popular before the advent of high speed differential equation solving algorithms.
Thanks for the information. Will change my example next time.
Yes, my idea was that mathematics isn't inherently testable nor observable but is still worth studying.
Well we now know that electrons don't whirl around the nucleus, millions of times a second. The exist entirely within a discrete energy state, defined by a particular quantum number, represented as a probability density across the superposition of all possible positions... so fuck you God.