On The Limits of Human Talent

I'll chip in a little here also: Why not? Just because we know San Francisco and New York is no reason not to explore the area in between, is it?And, geologists and a whole bunch of other -ologists are just interested in those subjects. Really, they aren't doing it to tweak religious believers, that's just how those believers perceive it. It is for useful, practical purposes. (And your paranoia is showing again.) It was not $27 million to go to the moon, in 1969 dollars or in any other year's dollars. You could look it up; I'm not going to do it for you. (It'll be good practice, as you apparently aren't used to looking up facts on the interwebs.)And no, they got far more than just rocks. The list of advances that came out of the early space program is quite lengthy. There are hundreds of things in common usage today that had their origins in the 1960s space program, although most folks are unaware of that fact. Remote sensing and instrumentation as used in modern medicine is just one. You can look the rest up yourself. You obviously need the practice.

You seem to have some bitter grudge against science in general and the geological sciences in particular. Could it be that those fields disprove some of your beliefs? Not everything science does has a directly perceived benefit, but as has been the case for hundreds of years scientific knowledge accumulates gradually. An important part of this process is that old beliefs and falsehoods are examined and discarded.I suspect this is really what concerns you about geology and studying rocks--your beliefs about the age of the earth have been disproved and discarded. This happened about 200 years ago, incidentally. A mistake of that magnitude does nullify your point. There is no place in science for mistakes--they must be rooted out and discarded. Scientists who are careless in their research or writing don't impress anyone, and are soon bypassed.According to Wiki, the final cost of project Apollo was reported to Congress as $25.4 billion in 1973. Unfortunately, you post was not off by about $2 billion, but by about $25 billion. Perhaps you should have.There has been a persistent rumor that the plans for the Saturn V were destroyed, so this may be what you are referring to by "lost." This link suggests otherwise.What appears to have happened is NASA and their contractors moved on to better designs. The blueprints for the original Saturn hardware are in an archive, where they belong. They are now only of historical interest.

I'd like to address a couple of your points: While that may be true, what are the other sources of knowledge? And to what degree are they subject to verification and falsification? Science is something that we can rely on because it is based on data and theory, and here is why: if someone feels that a particular data set is too limited, or incorrect, they can gather new and perhaps more accurate data. Theory is a tool to explain that data, and it too is subject to verification and falsification. If you come up with data that a particular theory does not explain, then perhaps that theory needs to be revised or even discarded. That's not a problem, as it happens from time to time in science. The subsequent theory is even more accurate, and that's the goal of science.One of the nice things about science is that it is conducted in most all countries of the world, and by practitioners of most faiths--or of no faith. Results that are obtained by someone in one country, or a believer in one particular religion, can be checked by someone in another country or of another religion. If the scientific method is applied, it works everywhere and for everyone who applies it.You seem to disagree, for religious reasons, with the results of scientific inquiry. From this comes your distrust, or even hate, for science and the scientific method.What you need to do is start at the beginning and examine the actual data, and if you find it wanting, gather some additional data. Don't gripe about the method itself unless you can show that you have something better to offer.And here we are back at "science isn't the only source of knowledge." You will need to demonstrate that some other form of "knowledge" is worthy of inclusion in scientific research. But please remember, "divine" revelation, dogma, scripture and other unverifiable forms of "knowledge" have been found to be less than reliable. So, with what do you propose we supplement scientific research? You seem to think that science is some kind of "special interest," while your particular religious belief is the norm, or obvious, position.This is not correct. Science, as it is based on verifiable evidence and tested theory, is the norm. Religions, of which there are upwards of 40,000 different denominations, sects, and other subdivisions around the world, is the opposite. When scientists have a disagreement they go to the data. When a disagreement arises within a religion, the most likely outcome is a schism or split, as religion relies far more on dogma, belief, revelation, and other non-empirical forms of "evidence." Science is not a "special interest" -- religions (all 40,000+ flavors) are the special interest as they want science to kowtow to their unevidenced beliefs.And your addition of the term "useful" to the requirement for science is bogus. When conducting research, there is no guarantee whether the results will be useful or not. Sometimes the findings are useful only in defining an avenue of research that appears to be unproductive. That's the way science works.So far science has found the religious claims that have been examined to be far less reliable, and hence less useful, than the results obtained through the scientific method.Perhaps you could examine some of your beliefs in light of scientific findings to see if they fall within this category?

Some basic misunderstandings:To be useful in science means that a theory explains and describes natural phenomena.Recently, however, creationists have been using the terms "real science" and "useful" to differentiate the sciences they agree with from those they don't agree with.Evolution and all related fields are not considered real science or useful because they contradict particular religious beliefs.This is just one more attempt to redefine the language, a la "its just a theory."