The definition of science: What should it be?

To take the single line of science in the search for truth, would be to block out other necessary angles.

I think it is those who admit they have a bias and agenda that are the most trustworthy.

To take the single line of science in the search for truth, would be to block out other necessary angles.

If you say so, but honestly I'm not aware of any area where the basic idea of consensus observation wouldn't work. Maybe you have something in mind?

And I put my trust in those who get results. The results of science are manifest. The results of wooly, spiritual thinking? Bupkis.

W.E.H. Lecky History of European Morals (vol. II. 9):, "It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. This has, indeed, been the wellspring of whatever is best and purest in Christian life. Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in the character and example of its Founder, an enduring principle of regeneration."To this we may add the testimony of the atheistic philosopher, John Stuart Mill from his essay on Theism, written shortly before his death (1873), and published, 1874, in Three Essays on Religion. (Am. ed., p. 253): "Above all, the most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced, by holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate more than the God of the Jews, or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modem mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been super-added by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source."

Rob writes:Frog Crashes:Yes! Nazi Germany? Joseph Mengala?

Rob writes:Frog Crashes:Adolf Hitler and Joseph Mengala got results...

I thought it was all about evangelising myself.

science seeks truth but understands that it is unachievable

Hitler was the ultimate example of wooly thinking.

"The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or, as the Nazi liked to say, of "Blood and Soil." I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."

Because, if we work very hard and are very patient, we can get very, very, very close to the truth.

How will you ever know that that's true?

Because, if we work very hard and are very patient, we can get very, very, very close to the truth.

Rob writes:Actually, Hitler did what was perfectly natural and up to date scientifically at the time.

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Mengele got results...

Wrong theories don't get much work done.

We won't ever have perfect knowledge of anything, but we can know with a good degree of confidence when we are on the right track.

We agree! Oh my God! What does that mean?