Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Open-mindedness



via QualiaSoup

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a little skeptical of people that believe that science is the only source for answers, what for example might be the scientific or mathematical equation for love or fear. perhaps one day every human error will be corrected by science to the point that we will all be robots.. perfect human responses all the time. Ahhh a scientific heaven that we built ourselves.

Steve said...

Hey ANONYMOUS,

Thanks for the examples of the logical fallacies known as "Appeal to Consequences" and "Straw Man."

Appeal to Consequences:

If P, then Q will occur.
Q is undesirable.
Therefore, P is false.

If science answers all, we will all be mindless robots! Being mindless robots is bad. Science is wrong.

Straw Man:

Person A has position X.
Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y.
Person B attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.

Person A (let's call him Steve): Science provides objective answers to questions about the natural universe.
Person B (let's call him ANONYMOUS): Science claims to be able to provide ALL the answers about the universe.
Person B (ANONYMOUS) attacks Science as unable to answer everything, concluding that science in general is false/incorrect/flawed.

No one claims science can answer everything. However, it does provide answers to the natural universe. What answers does religion or spirituality provide regarding the natural universe? Has religion or spirituality provided any answers regarding the existence of A supernatural universe? Objectively, speaking?

What exactly is your criticism here?