The problem with science II

If what you're saying is that science shouldn't even bother because they're bound to get it wrong, then that's only true for one of two reasons:1) The scientific metholodgy can't grapple with these subjects. You'd have to show the weakness of the methodology for that to be true. You haven't been doing that -- just calling the rest of us idiots for not seeing the obvious truth of your point.2) The scientific results are different from what you know is right. Of course, it's much more likely that you're wrong and science is right, so we can basically reject this alternative. You're on the record, repeatedly, for saying that the purpose of heterosexual activity is reproduction. Now you think it's "laughable" to assert that men are attracted to women because they want to reproduce with them? Should we just start calling you "Flip-flop Faith"? You're not a biologist; in fact you don't really have any familiarity with the subject, so it's not surprising that you would say this. It's completely wrong, of course.

You mean "people who aren't familiar with science."Doesn't that tell you something? Your average person is pretty scientifically ignorant. If what you're saying is that people who don't know that much about science find your views totally reasonable, doesn't that tell you something about those views? What kind of views, in your opinion, are most typically found among the ignorant? My answer would be: wrong ones. You think I don't understand why you hold the views you do? Nothing could be further from the truth. What's so hard to understand about ignorance?

You make it sound like I've done something wrong. And how is that not addressing the point? It seems to me that I've done both those things - I've addressed the point by attacking the logic behind it. Isn't that how points are addressed? I think that's mistaken reasoning. Believe me when I tell you that as a student of both the humanities and the sciences, and as a person who moves in and has interactions with both circles, the thought processes aren't "two different languages.". There's certainly two different cultures, but people making arguments in the sciences and people making arguments in the humanities are doing the exact same thing - taking facts that everybody can agree on, and applying tools of reasoning that everybody agrees are valid in principle, to defend a position.It's the same in both cultures. The tools may be different, and the different communities may have different standards about what constitutes a "fact." But the basic reasoning is the same. People who advance scientific propositions are asked to support them with evidence from observation or expermint. People who advance propositions about the meaning of a novel, or a movie, are asked to support them with evidence from the text. I think the mistake you make is assuming that everybody arrives at positions in a reasonable way, or that everybody's position would be reasonable if only it could be expressed in the "right" way.This is not true. Plenty of people arrive at positions not by any rigorous, reasonable process. Most people jump to the conclusion that "feels" right, or confirms what they already believe, or is most consistent with the beliefs of the group that they want to be a part of.Without realizing that people hold positions for these reasons as well, you're going to consistently see these arguments as mutual miscommunication; when really, it's more often a function of one participant being more right and more reasonable than the other, who lacks the training and practice in reason needed to see that. She has. She's consistently used this reasoning to rebut the "natural"-ness of homosexual relationships and gay marriage, in a myriad of threads. It's her position that the opposite sexes are "made" to be with each other, and that the reason for this arrangement is, in part, reproduction.

And I see that point coming right out of a view that's very common among the community that she refers to - the idea that scientists don't actually know all that much more than regular folks, or your mother.But it's not true. Scientists become experts in their fields. I don't see why. Just because I feel something one way doesn't mean that it is that way. People with amputations "feel" like they still possess that limb. The "human experience" conclusion from that is "people have a soul, and when the body's arm is removed, the soul's arm remains." The scientific conclusion is that proprioception is a function of specialized-by-region structures in the brain that remain even when the limb that they model is removed. All of which contradicts the "feeling" that we have a soul, or whatever.To the extent that anything is observable, it is amenable to scientific investigation. And the idea that a common person can know as much about a field as a scientist who is an expert in that field is so counter-obvious that it "feels" like a smart thing to say, like it's the product of wisdom and experience; but that's not true, either. It's counter-obvious because it's obviously wrong.

Feels that way to me. And last time I checked, I'm a man. You don't seem to be.Isn't it possible that you just don't know what you're talking about, here? Oh, really? You've never had the feeling that one of the purposes of children and the family was to take a part of yourself and make sure that it survived beyond your death?I don't understand how anyone can not have the feeling that attraction and mating were about children, and that children were about the survival of some part of the self. As far as I'm concerned, anybody who asserts that they don't have those feelings is probably misrepresenting their feelings out of ignorance or deceit.

We're not blind; you're just wrong. It really is just that simple.But, of course, in your staggering arrogance, anybody who doesn't agree with you is the one that has the problem. The entire scientific community rejects the conclusions that Faith agrees with? Why, of course, the problem is with the entire scientific community. Faith is simply too smart, or whatever you are, to be wrong.Sure, makes perfect sense. I'm sure that's the exact explanation.

You need to start being open to other explanations for our disagreement with you beyond "being indoctrinated" and "being too stupid to know good sense when we see it."There's absolutely nothing about your ideas that is ambiguous or unclear. You're like that guy in "Being John Malcovitch" who's absolutely convinced that he has a speech impediment, and that everybody who tells him that he doesn't and that they understand him just fine is simply being polite.You're just like that. Except for the charitable assumptions about your opponents, that is.