Russia fires a top geneticist who claimed people could live to 900 before sins caused Biblical flood

Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.

badbytes,

Saw recent Russian plan to solve road accidents, by having Russian Orthodox priest spread holy water on roads to bless them. This story seems inline.

afraid_of_zombies,

Might even make the problem even worse. People who are sick and know they are being prayed for show slightly worse outcomes. The theory is that they are less inclined to follow doctor advice since they think the problem will be solved for them. Maybe drivers would be more inclined to take more risks.

veganpizza69,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

It’s embarrassing that he even got that far.

DragonTypeWyvern,

Wait until you hear about Lysenkoism

braxy29,

wow, that headline is a whole journey

TokenBoomer,

Lyskenko LIVES!

lietuva,

why do i need to hear about Kacapstan, they’re irrelevant

doctorcrimson,

Mixed feelings, on one hand it’s good he is out, on the other hand it is shameful they let him get to such an incredibly high level of authority and left him there for so long.

OsrsNeedsF2P,

Some people go bonkers later in life

RizzRustbolt,

Am I on Lemmy, or the SCP wiki?

hungryphrog,

bruh what

cyberpunk007,

Listen. It’s not that hard. A flood happens and now we have nearly 1/10th the lifespan.

DONT YOU GET IT?!

/s

APassenger,

That’s quite literally in the Bible. People are stated as having extraordinary lifespans (e. g., Methuselah).

Then there was a flood after which people saw a rainbow for the first time ever. Gods promise not to flood us again.

The implication seems to be that the earth was in a firmament bubble and the bubble burst, sending down water. Then we had direct sun and not the filtered kind that He* created us for.

No longer in our best element, we die earlier.

I’m not saying the above is true, I’m saying I’ve heard this for decades now and it checks out against biblical description.

Tar_alcaran,

And this is why, while you can have smart Christians, you really can’t have smart biblical literalist.

jaxxed,

Can you give a reference please? Sounds like sermon quoting to me, they tend to have a ranting quality to them.

AngryCommieKender,

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah

There ya go, all the references, plus a family tree!

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Isn’t there a genealogy with a timeline somewhere in Genesis? It’s like a whole chapter of who fucked who and how long they lived.

prole,

Yeah, there are entire books in the OT dedicated to lineage, and I’m pretty sure it’s all been debunked. It’s not a historical document in any way whatsoever.

LesserAbe,

Lol I mean how do you debunk something that wasn’t originally intended to be a scientific document. (I know that’s not the mindset among Christians)

afraid_of_zombies,

Ok it has been debunked because the events described are often not only internally inconsistent they do not match up with what we now know. And before you start on “it’s an analogy” keep in mind it wasn’t for the people who wrote it and lived with it as well as the confusion of what it is an analogy for.

LesserAbe, (edited )

Sorry, think you mistook me. I’m saying debunking is something you do witth certain genres of material and not others. We might debunk a news report or a biography or a scientific study. We don’t debunk a novel or TV show or a campfire story.

I got a few credit hours away from being a bible major before I dropped it and eventually became an atheist. Our biblical interpretation professor started the first class by saying, “whether the six days in which God created the earth are literal or metaphorical doesn’t matter.” He said the Bible was not written to be a textbook, it started as an oral tradition which was later written down, and it’s purpose was to describe a people’s identity, where they fit in the universe and what they should do.

You’re right to say the genealogy is not historically accurate, I was just saying it’s not something it really makes sense to say was debunked.

afraid_of_zombies,

I am glad you changed majors, I almost went for that subject myself.

With that said I fully reject his assertion that it’s purpose was to help the individual. That requires way way too much. The Bible we have is a product of multiple major and minor cannon making attempts. with associated many scribes. To claim all of these men, across a continent and +15 centuries of history speaking different languages under much different governments in much different cultures all had the same purpose is damn near impossible. Anyone claiming that has fallen under the spell of univocal textualism, i.e the Bible speaks with one voice.

Also you know it’s factually wrong. Over 60% of the NT are the letters of Paul or people pretending to be him. The Apocalypse of John was definitely a stand alone pamphlet. And the Gospels are for the most parts just fanfics off other writings with little to no oral tradition behind them. Same thing for the OT. Judges very unlikely to have ever had an oral tradition behind t for example.

Much of the bible does serve a purpose however. Propaganda.

Genesis: this is why we were picked to be the best

Numbers: this is how we are the best

Leviticus: here is a bunch of rules to follow and skydaddy will kill us if you don’t

Duet.: this is why the foreigners are foreign

Early prophets: listen to Rabbis or skydaddy is going to get really angry again

Judges: democracy sucks, follow the Rabbis, no not the temple ones, the other ones

Middle Prophets: we got the best king

Late prophets: fuck why did you people sin so much?

Letters: I am Paul, I am so great

Mark: Paul was so great

Matthew: don’t forget about Jesus!

Luke-acts: both are great

James: James was also great

John: hey guys remember us Jerusalem followers? We are also kinda nice.

Different John: Nero sucks

There. I solved the Bible. No long ass genealogies needed.

APassenger,

Genesis 6 through 9.

You’re asking me to provide a reference for the biblical flood story. When I say it’s in there… It’s in there.

I get that you don’t know me, but the second sentence of your post isn’t helpful.

Psythik,

So you mean to tell me that you’re weren’t raised by hardcore Christians who drilled this “fact” down your throat well into adulthood? And that it’s our fault for being sinners so we can’t live 969 years anymore?

You’re lucky son of a bitch, you know that, right?

Microplasticbrain,

I was having a normal conversation with a coworker about life expectancy rising medical advancedments and what not, she pivots and says yea in the bible people lived for like a thousand years. I was just like yeah haha

JCreazy,

It’s always confused me how someone that believes in a religion can be a scientist. They directly contradict each other. It just makes it sound like people are in denial.

FrostKing,

Its definitely not true that science and religion have to contradict each other. Take Christianity—you can easily believe in scientific methods to discover the way the world works, while believing that ‘God’ is the Creator of those things.

trebuchet,

Yes but that’s hardly the entirely of Christian belief. What about the part about living until 900 before?

Well, I suppose one way to reconcile those things is that God created genetic diseases at that point to punish us for our sin.

afraid_of_zombies,

Right we have found human remains and see no evidence of this.

Mobiuthuselah,

The big difference is that many religious beliefs can’t be tested. They are just believed in faith. In science, nothing is believed. It’s all evidence based and tested. A scientist doesn’t have to reconcile their religious beliefs with their scientific ways because their beliefs are outside the realm of the scientific method. They accept that they don’t have a way to measure or test those things.

Tar_alcaran,

Beliefs can’t, but those beliefs generally come from somewhere, and those books tend to be full of testable claims.

And those tests generally fail, meaning we can only assume those sources are not really literally true. And if they’re not true, you’re really just making stuff up as you go along and assuming things are true as you see fit.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with making stuff up, I do it all the time for table top gaming. But I don’t base my worldview on the stuff I just imagine into being

Deism isn’t incompatible with science, but any god who does stuff can be tested. Since I’ve never seen a single paper published showing any evidence for any god, I can only assume that either no gods exist, or they don’t do anything. For me, those are basically the same thing.

Mobiuthuselah,

There are things in those books that are demonstrably true, but that doesn’t necessarily prove everything in them just as those things that are demonstrably false don’t necessarily disprove everything in them.

It’s just a matter of not being able to observe, measure, or physically test a god’s existence. From an objective standpoint, believing whether a god exists or not is still just a belief.

I’m only trying to show how a scientific person could compartmentalize their beliefs from their studies and to that end, I think we agree that they aren’t incompatible. What someone chooses to believe after that is up to them, because as you point out, there’s no peer reviewed published evidence one way or another.

prole,

Why is it acceptable to make such a huge leap to “[…] Therefore there must be a god (and it’s this specific one)” without any evidence? How does that comport with scientific thought?

Why would it be acceptable to believe such an extraordinary claim for this one specific thing, and yet require adherence to the scientific method for literally any other claim they evaluate?

That inconsistency is concerning to me, and that’s why I don’t trust scientists who are religious.

cyberpunk007,

The thing that gets me is this whole god thing has never in hundreds of years shown or done anything of biblical proportions and we are supposed to just believe it? Prove to me it’s real. I love how the defense for this is how you need to believe for it to be real but I’m sorry that’s not how that works. If you tell me you have a quarter in your pocket I’m but never show me it why would I believe you?

Why should we have to prove nonexistence when they can’t prove existence? If there is no proof, I simply can’t believe it.

But that’s me.

prole,

Yup. And having a quarter in a pocket is a perfectly reasonable thing that is not only possible, but happens all the time. And even then, there’s no real reason to believe it.

Now do the same thing for a claim of the supernatural.

SpezBroughtMeHere,

So what imperial evidence would answer your questioning without you trying to debunk that? I mean if God literally spoke to you, would you accept that or were you just hallucinating?

afraid_of_zombies,

I don’t know. Given that your skydaddy is all knowing shouldn’t it know? Shouldn’t it be sitting in heaven now thinking “oh man this one is searching for me and not finding. Let me do the one thing that would convince him”. You know exactly like the road to Damascus Experience or Thomas putting his hands on Jesus?

SpezBroughtMeHere,

Well, I didn’t ask what God would do to prove himself. I asked is there anything that would change your mind or is it made up and there’s nothing that would get you to change your beliefs? I have to ask because I’m not all knowing, I rely on conversation to get info.

afraid_of_zombies,

Right but it shouldn’t be up to us. If there is an all knowing being it knows the answer to this question and it chooses otherwise. I assume you are Christian if not I am sorry for my wrong assumption. Why doesn’t the all knowing being of the universe not do whatever it would take to convince people that it exists to save all those billions from hell, when it knows exactly what is required?

It did it for Paul, it did it for the doubters around Gallie, it did it for Thomas. Why play favorites? Especially as an all knowing being it knows what will happen if it does?

Almost as if none of this bullshit happened and James was running a cult.

afraid_of_zombies,

Ok let’s take Christianity.

We are told a man came back to life violating what we know from biology. We are told the man had to die because original sin which was an event caused in the Garden of Eden, which breaks everything we know about evolution and the history of our world. We are told that 3 = 1 which breaks logic and math. We are told that women are to remain silent and yet the success of a country depends on the degree that women are able to be treated like equals. We are told that anyone who is LGBT+ is a bad person and yet the evidence doesn’t support that at all. We are told that Pontius Pilot decided to put down a revolution by stupidly only killing the leader and then let the rest of the group operate under his nose for decades which breaks what we know about history, Roman culture, and freaken common sense.

We are told that the followers of Jesus could heal at a touch, that Paul could drift thru jail walls, that the Romans would allow a privileged burial for a criminal, that demons inhibit buddies, that food can magically appear, that water can become wine by prayer, that the mustard seed is the smallest seed, that leprosy can be cured with prayer, that there is another dimension full of human minds without human brains to power them, that two Jewish women would prepare a male body for burial, that a wealthy guy would randomly give away a section of his family estate for burial to a criminal, that the secret police of the Pharisees would break their own rules they had with Rome and have the local king do their dirty work, that 12 people would abandon their families to follow a cult leader just because he asked nicely…

List goes on and on. Christianity is not compatible with everything we know to be true.

blackbelt352, (edited )

To an extent it depends how that religion interacts with science. There’s quite a few major foundational discoveries that came from priests and ordained clergy from the Catholic Church: …wikipedia.org/…/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientis…

Within the Catholic Church there are a few orders of clergy dedicated to scientific discovery, especially the Jesuits.

Granted a lot of them conducted science under the broad philosophy of better understanding the universe God created, but if the end result eventually improves the lives of people, I don’t see how that’s an inherently bad thing.

If we wanted to be a bit more accurate to the hustoru of the real world, religious fundamentalism is opposed to science.

yetiftw,

people have to put their faith in something. science itself can serve as a personal religion

prole,

Not how science works.

SpezBroughtMeHere,

Not for scientists really. But for the average person that doesn’t understand it, absolutely. You’re just going of the word of some dude that said it was true. His friends agreed so it must be correct.

MJKee9,

If so, then they are horrible scientists.

BastingChemina,

They don’t necessarily contradict each other (except for fundamentalist).

My understanding of religion is that the religion brings answer to the question “Why ?”, the science on the other hand answer the question “How ?”

Science will explain how human life appeared on earth but not why human life appears.

Religion is one way to answer why are we here and should we do with our life. I don’t necessarily agree with it but I could understand the appeal for some people.

wahming,

It’s more to do with religion falling apart when you apply the scientific method. And if you don’t, what kinda scientist are you?

WeirdGoesPro,
@WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Thelemite here—we do apply the scientific method to our religion. Every Thelemite is advised to keep a journal and study the results of their efforts in life to discover their true purpose and how to pursue it. We also create experiments to find ways to have more control over ourselves and our world.

The problem is that even people who use the scientific method can fall prey to bad practices and confirmation bias. That’s why it isn’t a bad idea for both science and religion to be peer reviewed.

afraid_of_zombies,

You know it just doesn’t work. Psychology, psychiatric medicine, sociology, law, game theory. Religion lost the monopoly on how the universe operates and claims to know how humans should operate. The more we learn the less it got correct.

We know that some people are medically better off presenting as a different gender than what they were born with. We know that some people prefer the same sex and that this is common among animals that are like us. We know that the fear of hell doesn’t motivate people to be more empathetic, just look at crime statistics in religious areas vs non-religious areas. We know a society that doesn’t charge interest on loans has no credit system that works. We know that physically beating a child that misbehaves does not correct the behavior. We know that the wealth level of a society depends almost completely with the degree that women can work.

And to a degree none of this should be surprising. Religion is a selfish meme. It doesn’t exist for our benefit it exists for its own. So of course religious societies do worse, their parasite is thriving.

batmaniam,

Science and religion (in the broad sense, not specific statements of a religion) are just two entirely separate things. Faith by it’s definition exists outside anything testable, so it’s just not part of science. Here’s the one hitch: science does in-fact point to faith. Bare with me here.

We know with whatever certainty anyone would require that the universe is expanding, and that the rate of that expansion is accelerating. We know with certainty that >90% of all that we know is there, just by looking up, is already permanently and irrevocably beyond our grasp. It will all blink out of the night sky, and no interaction will ever be possible.

Future scientists (human, alien, whatever) will look at certain phenomena, the cause of which we today would know to be a specific galaxy, etc, but we would have no way to gather a single shred of evidence. There would be no way, literally none, to ever interreact with those stellar structures.

To these future scientists you would be citing ancient texts and proposing a 100% untestable hypothesis. You would be proposing literal gods outside of the machine. And you’d be right. But it would all have to be taken on faith.

teichflamme,

There’s a difference between working with the latest and most probable hypothesis under the assumption that it could be wrong and faith in a religious sense.

Faith and dogma leave no shred of doubt that they’re right. Science acknowledges that it could be completely wrong but we have no further data to replace at this point in time.

batmaniam,

Well right, which is why they’re separate things entirely. And I am definitely taking some poetic license, but I outlined a pretty concrete example of how the way the scientific process is structured it’s a tool for what’s demonstrable, not inherently what’s correct. In what I outlined, it’s possible you could never gather that data. In every sense that matters most of the universe would no longer exist.

You can do the same thing in reverse (we’ll never actually know what happened at the big bang, we weren’t there, still we can figure out a lot). It just drives the point home more when you realize there are things you can look at, observe, make hypothesis and test against here today, that will essentially leave the realm of science in the future.

So again, this is definitely some navel gazing, and I’m just about as atheistic as they come, but the original spawn of this part of the thread was “how can any scientist be religious”. It’s because the scientific process isn’t actually concerned with being “correct”, now or in the future, just plausible and useful. I’ve worked in the lab with folks who viewed their work as understanding the universe someone created for them. That’s entirely compatible with the scientific method. You can take a minute to appreciate the insanity and beauty of everything we know about this universe and the fact that were even capable of comprehending some of it without it corrupting your scientific method. Some people choose to appreciate that insanity and beauty and assign divine intent. So long as the graph has a decent R^2, that’s just fine.

teichflamme,

I think you make an interesting point and got me thinking, didn’t want to come of as standoffish or something.

I just think science pointing at faith loses the nuance between the assumption that a working theory is currently correct and the deep belief in dogma. Technically you could call both faith, but they are very different.

As you pointed out science deals with unknowns and sometimes there’s not even a theory. Faith has historically been one of the primary ways to deal with any kinds of unknowns, of course, but it’s not the only one.

I agree that being a scientist and being faithful isn’t a contradiction. I feel like science is a very broad term and certain disciplines might be more or less inclined to be religious though.

batmaniam,

It’s just one of those things in terms of logic of the system giving rise outside of itself. Like I said, dogma and religion are two very different things. I just find a lot of beauty in the fact that science can predict literal apotheosis by our own definition; it’s inherent in the system. If someone chooses to see that and assign intent, I can’t argue.

There’s just something amazing about a system which defines the conditions which are outside it’s grasp. It’s like how banach-tarski shows 1+0=2. Practical? Not really, but none the less… under certain conditions…

afraid_of_zombies,

No.

Faith isn’t outside of science by it’s nature it was decreed to be as such. We can study faith perfectly fine. Go join all those studies where they get people to pray while getting a CAT scan or testing the impact on patient recovery with prayer. Of course it never works the opposite way. If religion had evidence it was true you would never stop hearing about it, since it doesn’t it declares that it doesn’t need it. Isn’t that freaken convenient?

Secondly your example of one day, in tens of billions of years, humanity won’t be able to study somethings is not here or there. Yes, as far as I know it will be true but a limit on what we can know is not the same as a capacity to know. If I flip a coin and don’t tell you the results, you don’t know the results but you can certainly comprehend the result.

The supernatural claims of religion are beyond our capacity to understand since they break what we know to be true.

Religion makes testable claims and those claims are broken often.

veganpizza69,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

The beauty of en.wikipedia.org/…/Compartmentalization_(psycholo… (splitting one’s mind)

SuddenDownpour,

The problem is that some people like this guy are clearly not compartimentalizing at all.

veganpizza69,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

Nope, the problem with this guy is that he got a career when he should’ve been shoved out of science related academia and institutions a long time ago.

SpezBroughtMeHere,

Well, I believe in a Creator directly because of science. We aren’t a result of chaos that just happened to line up at precisely the right time. Let’s take the rules that govern the universe. Gravity is a constant. Science proves that. It didn’t magically happen. The laws of thermodynamics. The math is always correct and it was occurring well before anyone could articulate it. Same with biology. It takes 3500 calories to change one pound of weight, so many grams of protein to maintain muscle mass. I can keep going but the point is, God said it was created and science proves its not a happy random accident. So if that points to plausibility, what other things in the Bible can be plausible, even pointing to truth?

DadVolante,
@DadVolante@sh.itjust.works avatar

What does science say is not a random, happy accident, and where do they state this?

JCreazy,

This sounds like a whole lot of mental gymnastics to me to justify the logic. While I can’t explain how everything came to be, it also can’t be explained how God came to exist and until either one is proven, it makes far more sense that things have adapted over a billion of years instead of a single entity that there isn’t a single shred of evidence to exist. Religion just doesn’t seem logical to me.

SpezBroughtMeHere,

I could try to explain it better for you to understand if you’d like. There’s no mental gymnastics. Can you explain why if there’s no definitive source, what makes God not a plausible explanation? Given the scientific method of observation, what rules that out as a possibility?

JCreazy,

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

afraid_of_zombies,

We don’t have to rule it out, it is up to the person asserting it to provide evidence of it being true. I don’t have to disprove unicorns, I can demand that unicorn believers show me the data. You are reversing the burden of proof.

In any case the problem of evil pretty much rules out any god you would actually want to follow. So while there might be some diest god out there it isn’t like it gives us anything. You are not going to pray to a being that isn’t listening and wouldn’t care if it heard.

eatthecake,

If the chaos had lined up a bit later, or a bit earlier, we might not exist. Everything might be a bit different, almost as if this slightly different universe was perfectly designed for the slightly different creatures living in it. Magic.

afraid_of_zombies,

If we didn’t exist we wouldn’t be here to wonder why we didn’t. The miracle isn’t that we fit the universe we live in, the muscle would be a universe that we don’t fit in and yet here we are.

eatthecake,

Yes. My point was that if the universe were a little different then we’d also be a little different. It’s all a weird crazy miracle though. Anything existing at all, or nothing existing, all incomprehensible, like magic.

afraid_of_zombies,

If you say so.

eatthecake,

If you can explain the existance of existance then i’m all ears, if you can prove it with the scientific method then you might as well be god. I’m just an agnostic atheist who happily sees the whole damn shebang as a big wtf.

afraid_of_zombies,

It isn’t that I know it is your assertion that I can never know.

eatthecake,

I genuinely have no idea what you’re trying to communicate.

afraid_of_zombies,

The constants of the universe do not require an intelligent designer. Additionally religion depends on the supposed non-consistent behavior of existence. E.g. miracles.

Really can’t have it both ways. Does the universe appear governed by laws? That means it has an intelligent creator. Does it appear governed by chance? Well that also requires an intelligent creator. The assertion can’t be tested and as such isn’t worth worrying about.

SpezBroughtMeHere,

So where did gravity come from? Where did the laws of thermodynamics come from? What about the laws of motion? If you can’t definitively explain its origin, objectively why is God not a plausible answer?

afraid_of_zombies,

Really can’t have it both ways. Does the universe appear governed by laws? That means it has an intelligent creator. Does it appear governed by chance? Well that also requires an intelligent creator. The assertion can’t be tested and as such isn’t worth worrying about.

You must have forgotten to read this part. I know because you decided to ignore it.

afraid_of_zombies,

Cognitive Dissonance. I was raised very devout and I did it for years. It doesn’t confuse me, it evokes pity. I get to see people making the same fucking mistake I made and it hurts.

I made that mistake, no one else has to. Rip the band-aid off!

Stupidmanager,

yep, same, for years. you WANT it to be true, so you ignore the contradictions.

afraid_of_zombies,

Of course humans are made in the image of God and get Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.

Haagel,

With all due respect, my friend, you’re assuming a false dillema. The majority of academic scientists are religious, reflective of the general population’s religious affiliation.

Of course there are a minority of highly vocal outliers on both sides of the spectrum who profit from the discord, real or imagined.

sciencereligiondialogue.org/…/what-do-scientists-…

afraid_of_zombies,

While it is true it doesn’t mean it isn’t weird.

blackbelt352,

There’s a few Neil DeGrasse Tyson clips I remember seeing around about various scientific and religious interactions.

Like he calls nonsense on the BCE/CE vs BC/AD change because scientists, and really most of scociety, operates on the Gregorian Calendar which was created by the Catholic Church under Pope Gregory XIII and is the most accurate calendar we’ve ever made to account for leap years. Why deny the creators of a fantastic calendar their due respect just because they were religious in a time when everyone was religious?

And in a different he also talked about the Baghdad House of Wisdom and how throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, Baghdad was a center of intellectual thought and culture, until the Fundamentalists got into power and declared manipulating numbers was witchcraft, and ended up being a huge brain drain in Baghdad for centuries.

Moghul,

NDT is a massive blowhard. I’m not religious but I got turned off by his weird interview with God thing.

Haagel,

He’s one of the profiteers, in my opinion.

CleoTheWizard,
@CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world avatar

His point about the change to BCE/CE is the actual nonsense. His point is that we should keep religious terminology being used in science? Out of respect for the creators? When have we ever done that? Science is secular and should be a secular pursuit. Every biologist and anthropologist shouldn’t have to reference Christ just to date their samples even if the calendar is the same. I respect NDT for his work but his awful takes like this hurt what he says often.

danl,

Planet names, days of the week, months, which year is zero - even that we have 7 days in the week - All of these are direct religious references that we’re fine with.

VindictiveJudge,
@VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world avatar

Months are actually numbers and politics. For instance, August is named for Augustus Caesar and December basically means ‘tenth month.’

danl,

January is named for Janus, February for a religious feast, March for Mars and June for Juno (Jupiter’s wife). April may also be a goddess Apru but the connection is still not agreed upon.

VindictiveJudge,
@VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world avatar

I think the BCE/CE thing is dumb because it’s just a religious calendar under a different name. It doesn’t change what Year 1 represents anymore than changing the spelling of a word changes its etymology. If we want a secular calendar we should do something like add a few thousand years to count from the founding of the first cities, or have it start in 1945 with the founding of the UN, or even 1970 when Unix time begins. As I see it, calling it the ‘common era’ does absolutely nothing to divorce the calendar from the birth of Jesus.

afraid_of_zombies,

Make it 1969 for the moon landing. It would just be slightly off unix time which will annoy low level programmers forever.

surewhynotlem,

Humans are fantastic at compartmentalization

NOSin,

Not throwing a pike here, but you are short sighted.

To think it needs to be compartmentalized or that religion and science are mutually exclusive is a false dilemma as said above.

Science can simply be the way that God/s would choose to interact with our world.

surewhynotlem,

Yes. And it’s just as likely that super-god created God to do exactly that.

But that’s not the point. The scientific mind requires evidence and repeatability. To believe in God without evidence or repeatability means they’ve compartmentalized that part of their thinking.

Haagel,

Can you prove that the scientific mind requires evidence and repeatability? That sounds like circular reasoning.

d00ery,

I have a hypothesis, I collect evidence, record the results and see if it supports the hypotheses.

The experiment is repetable.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Haagel,

Yes, of course. And we all love the results of this methodology.

It’s just that using the scientific method to prove the validity of the scientific method is circular reasoning. At some point, we have to think philosophically about the means of knowledge.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

d00ery,

We can think practically about knowledge too.

I put my hand on a hot stove, it burns, I remove my hand and the burning stops. Isn’t that knowledge?

Haagel,

Yes, of course, but it’s not the extent of knowledge.

Nor is it universal knowledge. What burns your hand isn’t going to burn other materials, or even other organisms.

There’s always a limit to what can be perceived with the organic senses. That’s the axiomatic flaw of empiricism.

What do you think? What is knowledge?

d00ery,

Are you suggesting there may be forces or powers we can’t yet measure?

Because that’s pretty much what science has been about for all of human evolution. We’ve observed events, and then tried to work out why they happen, and yet in all that time we’ve been unable to prove, or disprove god.

Haagel,

There are many forces and powers that cannot be measured. They’re often the most self-evidently desirable things in the world. Love, hate, determination, artistry, joy, generosity, compassion, character, wisdom, justice and beauty, etc. Hence the cute quote from sociologist William Bruce Cameron that “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. Most psychological and sociological phenomena are immeasurable by the strict meaning of the word.

As for physics, we can’t measure the future, for example, though there are interesting equations which could possibly account for an near infinite variety of outcomes in a given system. And there are many theories that we can only measure under ideal, localized conditions. We can only hope that they are ubiquitous throughout the universe.

Then there are problems like the Duhem–Quine underdetermination thesis. This thesis says that the agreement of the empirical consequences of a theory with the available observations is not a sufficient reason for accepting the theory. In other words, logic and experience leave room for conceptually incompatible but empirically equivalent explanatory alternatives. This is especially endemic in biology.

And if you want to be more philosophical, it has been argued by guys like Hume and Locke that there is always a “veil of perception” between us and external objects: we do not have directly measurable access to the world, but instead have an access that is mediated by sensory appearances, the character of which might well depend on all kinds of factors (e.g., condition of sense organs, direct brain stimulation, etc.) besides those features of the external world that our perceptual judgments aim to capture. According to many philosophers, nothing is ever directly present to the mind in perception except perceptual appearances.

My point in all of this is that empiricism is axiomatically limited in it’s scope and potential. All of our chest-thumping and shouting, “Science! Science! Science!” is a bit naive when it ignores core issues of epistemology.

My personal belief is that knowledge is, in it’s first phase, abstract. Only then can it be quantifiable or measurable within a particular system.

The recent trend towards scientism shys away from abstraction, perhaps because they perceive it as a sort of dog-whistle for God.

d00ery,

Perhaps there’s an argument against scientific hubris: if we look through history, and to this day, we can see those who champion rigid adherence to religion above all else as the cause of much suffering. On the other hand the latter half of the 10 Commandments provide a fairly sensible groundwork for law and order in society.

As for love, whilst we may not be able to measure it directly, we can certainly see evidence of it’s power; “I would do anything for love, I’d run right in to hell and back” Meatloaf. I’d also argue that the core human emotions can be explained by evolution, and compared with animal behaviour. In preparing for fight or flight fear can be measured in a raised heart rate, the release of chemicals, and electrical activity within the brain.

I think one of the cornerstones of science is that it is open to a theory being overturned as new evidence comes to light.

Duhem–Quine, or the "veil of perception”, well yes, we do have to make some assumptions somewhere, you assume that I know how to read and understand your words written in English, which I do and I’m sure a great many others do - perhaps we could use this as a baseline example of knowledge. We all know the word “stop” and it’s meaning in context though we might not all react to it in the same way.

Then again, it could all just be my imagination.

NOSin,

You’re claiming a fact out of one of your assumption.

That thread is delightful in irony today, lots of self proclaimed unbiased and scientific, acting very biased and unscientific.

Haagel,

He who smelt it, dealt it

prole,

They’re not necessarily incompatible, technically, but I am very suspicious of anyone who claims to be a scientist yet are willing to believe such extraordinary claims despite a complete lack of evidence.

If they would never use such a low bar for evidence in literally anything else in their lives (such as, presumably, their academic and scientific career, which I hope didn’t involve “faith” at all), and yet are willing to completely suspend that need for evidence for their belief in the supernatural, then I don’t trust them.

NOSin,

So, because you don’t understand how can someone accepts that something they don’t have proof for, can exist, because they don’t have proof against after all, you’re ready to start doubting their professionalism or their capacity ?

That seem even more unscientific than what you tried to condemn through a fallacy.

WraithGear,
@WraithGear@lemmy.world avatar

I do when they are making unsubstantiated claims about “truth” in their field of study. If a geneticist claims that people lived longer because of peer review evidence shows their genetic makeup up allows for it would be one thing. But to make that claim when he should know better means he can’t be trusted and is already abusing his position

NOSin,

Soooooo, you’re saying every religious scientists make those kind of claims ? Because what you answered to wasn’t about that anymore.

WraithGear,
@WraithGear@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t remember saying “every” in my post. I do recall being specific on the conditions when it is a problem.

NOSin,

And yet, what you answered wasn’t about that case, thanks for your contribution.

Signtist,

It’s not that they accept that it can exist, it’s that they accept that it does exist. We have no reason to believe anything exists after death, or that any particular being created us, and to go even further, we have no reason to believe that one religion’s specific version of heaven exists after death, or one specific religion’s specific vision of god created us. Maybe something exists after death, but it’s just a huge everlasting game of dodge ball. Unlikely, but just as unlikely as heaven existing. Maybe a creature created us, but it’s a huge centipede. Again, unlikely, but just as unlikely as a human-shaped god creating us in his image.

There are virtually no universally-held consistencies even among all of the the relatively few currently-practiced religions, because none of them are based on anything but human imagination even if God does exist, since we’ve likely never had a real interaction with God even in that instance. Religion can exist, but not only is it highly unlikely, even in the event that it’s true, the likelihood that we randomly guessed the exact correct circumstances in which it does exist are nearly impossible.

The scientific approach to religion is to make no opinion on its existence, because to make a hypothesis about something that cannot be tested isn’t just worthless, it’s biased, which is even worse to a scientist.

NOSin,

If you were scientific, you’d know you’re taking a shortcut, ironically not being scientific.

The likeliness of it doesn’t matter, it can’t be proved either way, for now. There are a lot of consistencies between religions.

Because you can’t conceive faith existing with logic doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and that it discredites people you don’t know as a result, is a logic flaw.

Signtist,

Bud, I literally just wrote out multiple paragraphs about how it isn’t impossible. If the only thing you can think of to argue my point is to imagine I said something else, that should tell you something. Religion could be real, it could be fake. The only correct conclusion to draw is that we don’t know. Have no faith in the existence of a god, have no faith in the lack of a god - have only faith in what you can measure. That’s science.

NOSin,

Which you ended by"The scientific approach to religion is to make no opinion on its existence,", which is one of the fallacy in your reasoning, you’re reducing it to opinion, implying it can’t be treated scientifically.

Inferring from that, at best you could say that it should be left alone until scientists could even apply the scientific approach. As in, we don’t know, as you said. And that doesn’t preclude faith, which isn’t mutually exclusive with being scientific.

To be clear, what I read a lot in this thread, is being scientific should automatically infer you can’t be religious, because you can’t prove it’s real. But it omits that you can’t prove it isn’t.

Granted, the mistake might from where it started, IE this post where the scientist was being very unscientific.

Signtist,

The only way the scientific approach could be used to measure the existence of a deity would be to measure the deity itself, at which point the measurement would only be a formality - its existence would already be verified. That’s why it’s the opposite of science. You can learn of a black hole before ever observing one by simply understanding the basic fundamentals of physics, but a deity would exist even outside of that. No amount of measuring nature would be able to prove or disprove something that exists outside of that. You still haven’t made a single argument against that cornerstone of my argument. You can call it a fallacy all you want, but ultimately that’s just a word you’re using in place of actually arguing against my point. Faith is the belief that something is true without needing data. Science is the act of gathering data to form a belief. They are opposites.

NOSin,

Wrong, there are so many phenomenons that we couldn’t measure, and could barely infer, and yet they ended up existing, sometimes surprising people a great deal in the process.

Sometimes we even have been wrong about things we could measure.

So yes, still a fallacy.

I understand that the logic mind doesn’t like “It might or might not, for now we can’t say”, when it’s about absolute, but that’s how it is, while you really want to claim that it can’t be, no matter what. Because you can’t conceive god existing inside the laws of physics doesn’t mean it’s true.

For the end of your answer, I already explained that faith and logic are compatible, because you just say they are opposite doesn’t make it so. And speaking of observable proof : the many religious scientists we have in this day and age, with much more of them being competent and well composed in their thoughts about religion than the one in the OP (or the many people in this post).

JCreazy,

I’m curious what some of these phenomena are that you speak of. Also being wrong about the things we measure is exactly what science is for. That we know that it was wrong allows us to learn to do it correctly.

Signtist,

How many times do I need to tell you that I’m specifically saying that religion CAN exist? It CAN! I’ve never said nor implied that it’s impossible, and I’m not saying we should believe it’s impossible! I’m saying that it’s just as bad to believe it’s specifically real as it is to believe it’s specifically fake when we can’t measure it. To believe in religion is just as wrong as to believe in a lack of religion. We cannot know, so to believe anything about it is nothing more than an opinion and not a measurable fact. It’s fine to have an opinion, but to think about something scientifically is to remove any preconceived notions about whatever you’re studying and focus solely on what you can measure; since you can’t measure religion, you can’t think about it scientifically, which makes it the antithesis to science.

Yes, some things that are immeasurable end up being true - of course they do, but until they become measurable, they should not be assumed to be anything. If God shows up and we measure him, then he can be thought about scientifically, but until that point he can’t, and he shouldn’t be. Until we have something to measure, we should not assume any baseless ideas about its existence or lack thereof are true.

You say the logical mind has trouble saying “It might or it might not, for now we can’t say” but that has been my entire point this entire time! To be religious is to say “Yes, it does exist,” and to be atheist is to say “No, it does not exist,” both of which are wrong. The scientific way to think about religion is to specifically not make any decision one way or another, so when a scientist says they’re religious, that shows they’ve made a decision, which shows they’ve allowed unscientific biases to enter their daily life. Now, we’re all human, and we all have biases, but when we start making scientific presentations centered around our biases, as this man did, it’s incredibly problematic. Science and religion started out hand in hand, and most of our progress over the years has been due to our slow separation of the two.

NOSin,

That would apply if the scientists believing in their religion would claim to do so scientifically.

You’re again saying that a scientific can’t use faith in a case where he can’t know, or it means that he will do so for the entirety of his work, but we both know that’s not necessarily true. Because they choose to rely on opinion on this subject, does not necessarily mean that they do the same with their work ethic. (That would also mean doubting the work of a crushing majority of scientists, them being religious or atheist in most cases, unless agnosticism is much more widespread that last time I brushed the subject)

In essential, what I’m saying is because a scientist claims to be religious or atheist, thinking that their whole work should be doubted because of that, is a flawed argument.

PS : And because we can’t measure it, and don’t know if it’s “can’t measure yet” or “can’t measure ever”, we can’t say that religion is the antithesis of science. Which means we can think about it scientifically, we just don’t have the means to know if it’s correct.

Signtist,

You’re really desperate to find an argument I’m not making. Again, people can be religious. Scientists can be religious. However, if a scientist is religious they need to make very sure that their religion - that they believe in spite of no data, and is thus nothing more than an opinion - does not affect their science, which is required to be based on measurable data alone.

What this man did was make a scientific presentation based on his beliefs - his opinions - which were not based on measurements, and were thus unscientific. That was what crossed the line. I will always be wary of a religious scientist because I cannot determine whether their measurements are unaffected by the biases their religion gives them, but I can never truly dismiss their measurements, because I cannot be sure they are not legitimate. But when someone openly announces that they believe sin has caused a god to directly influence human genetics, and their claim is not based on any collected data, it shows that they absolutely have allowed their biases to affect the legitimacy of their work. In that instance, any past or present data that that person has collected will need to be re-measured by someone who has not shown to have allowed their biases to influence their work.

Something immeasurable is the antithesis to science, which is the act of measuring. If that thing later becomes measurable, it stops being the antithesis to science, because that immeasurability is no longer present. Insofar that we cannot know whether or not religion exists, it will continue to be something immeasurable, and will be antithetical to science. If someone wants to support both, they need to make absolutely sure that they are entirely compartmentalized, so that if the day comes that religion is either confirmed or denounced, it will not affect their work.

NOSin,

Ok, so considering that my original point, to which you answered, was that you don’t need to compartmentalize to be able to experiment science and religion at the same time, what is your point ?

Signtist,

My point is that religious scientists are required to walk a very fine line to do both, because every interaction a human has with the world is a form of measurement.

Looking at a blue sky is a measurement, watching a child grow up is a measurement, smelling a flower is a measurement; these things are science, and for a religious scientist to be unbiased, they cannot allow any question of why or how they exist to be answered with “God.” So, the question becomes: “What’s left for a religious scientist to truly believe in, and not measure?” and the answer is that only the immeasurable can be left up to faith - the idea of an afterlife, the idea of a creator who kicked off the phenomenon of “reality” itself, and other such immeasurable things can be left up to faith, but nothing else.

Anything that can be answered by looking closer at existence itself cannot - in any way - be answered scientifically with anything other than real data. What this man did was show that he had allowed the measurable to be defined by the immeasurable in his work, and thus lost his legitimacy as a scientist.

NOSin,

Oh, I agree for the scientist in OP, dude lost his marbles or is coping hard on his cognitive dissonance, but my point was answering to the much simpler subject of “Scientists can’t be religious or they’re not proper scientists”.

As to the very fine line religious scientists must walk, if we’re honest, it’s true of many things that make the life of a scientist, because it is measurable and can be approached scientifically, doesn’t mean they will approach and measure it that way, humans are fallible, and they often do fail, but that’s another subject.

Signtist,

You’re absolutely right - ultimately, true scientific method is impossible for humans, since we all have biases, but striving for perfection is how we get as close as we can to it.

As you mentioned, scientific progress can be made even with biased data from people who have let religion and science intermingle, but as others have shown in this thread, it often leads to a slow process of chipping away at society’s default answer of “God did it” little by little over time, which has significantly delayed scientific progress.

Even just 100 years ago this man likely wouldn’t have lost his job for making a claim without data that sin has directly impacted human health, and I see the fact that it’s now an unacceptable claim to be an indication that science as a whole is becoming less biased, in part due to its further separation from religion.

NOSin,

I do agree that they aren’t many, the ones who are actually careful about not mixing up their beliefs with science, sadly.

I see we do agree in the end, it was an interesting talk, thank you for that.

I do wonder if science really would have been quicker without religion tho. (Putting apart the time science treated religion as being heretic of course. I mean this in the “wouldn’t human find something else to be biased about/get their meaning lost in anyway” way)

Signtist,

It’s possible that something else would’ve gotten in the way if religion hadn’t, but I guess we can leave that immeasurable thing up to faith as well. I’m glad we came to an agreement in the end.

Haagel,

If you don’t mind me asking: why should you have faith in what you can measure? Is there an experiment to prove that empiricism is the best means of knowledge? Such an experiment would also be circular reasoning.

Obviously we’re plaqued on all sides by a deficiency of our organic senses, yet we seek to understand beyond the range of our senses. Philosophers have wrestled with this conundrum for a while.

plato.stanford.edu/…/rationalism-empiricism/

Signtist,

Measurement is the closest we’re able to get to the truth. It’s something that anyone can independently observe and achieve exactly the same result. It’s not really the truth - we’re never really able to achieve that - but it’s at least something we know exists beyond ourselves and our fallible tendency to simply take what someone else says is true as the truth.

Haagel,

Yeah, it’s something. I’ve got nothing against empiricism. Obviously I love the sciences, particularly the applied sciences.

But I find it amusing that the most self-evidently desirable things in life tend to resist measurement and empirical observation. I think that we need not be so avowed to that means as the all in all.

Signtist,

It’s fine to have opinions that you hold close even if they’re not entirely based in observable fact - for example, I understand that the notion of an afterlife brings a lot of people a sense of comfort that they may very much need in their life. The issue is when people take those opinions and apply them to something that extends far beyond their own life, such as this example of someone trying to push their opinion about god’s influence on genetics onto the scientific community at large.

If he had any real data at all to base it on, it’d at least be something to think about, but it’s nothing but his own interpretation of religious teachings that themselves aren’t based on any data we know of or currently have access to. If it helps him to think that, he can go ahead - I’d still worry about the effects it’d inadvertently have on the required impartiality of his work, but without the data to back those worries up, I’d have no reason to doubt him - but what he did was a step too far.

Haagel,

What would you say about Hitler’s explicit reference to Darwinism as a large part of the justification for his persecution of Jews and cripples? He based his opinions on real data.

Signtist,

He based his opinions on real data, but not all of the available real data. Darwinism and eugenics commonly point to certain 'bad genes" that they claim are present in the population, leading to such things as increased criminal activity and laziness. Real studies on these traits, however, find no familial correlation when accounting for upbringing; essentially, if you separate a child of a criminal from the life of a criminal, they’re no more likely to become a criminal than anyone else. Hitler only focused on studies that fail to account for the socioeconomic effect that children of criminals tend to have fewer options, and are thus more likely to become criminals themselves. This is an example of one of the most common ways that scientific results can be corrupted - by the inclusion of only data that fits a preestablished opinion, and excluding data that doesn’t.

Hitler also applied his cherry-picked data to certain scenarios, but not others. He claimed that he would create a future “utopia” by forcing subsequent generations to only carry desirable genes, but didn’t talk at all about the fact that doing so creates a current dystopia, the horrors of which completely outweighing any potential benefit. Yes, selective breeding and/or culling of undesirable traits from the gene pool is an effective way to create a creature with certain characteristics - it’s something we see often with breeding dogs and crops - but it’s extremely unethical to apply this reasoning to humans, whose lives most would say have inherent worth outside of their genetics. It’s also something we’re starting to realize is unethical to do to animals - an example of how new data and new understanding of current data change our outlook on the world over time.

Ultimately, impartial assessment of all available data should never bring you to the same conclusion as Hitler.

Haagel,

That sounds like a lot of gray area. Hitler wasn’t wrong about the premises of Darwinism that still stand today. This is straight out of Mein Kampf:

“In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher evolution.”

You say that it’s unethical to apply this reasoning to humans. Why? If the Third Reich had succeeded in conquering Europe or even the world, would we then consider this ethical?

Co-discoverer of the DNA double helix Francis Crick agrees, unfortunately:

smithsonianmag.com/…/dna-pioneer-james-watson-los…

Signtist,

It’s quite the stretch to imply that all Hitler did was apply the general concept of “survival of the fittest” to humanity. It’s true that animals who are unable to find sufficient food or a mate before passing are unable to pass their genes to the next generation, but these changes are incredibly slight; even in the wild, most animals don’t die because of their genes - they die because they were unluckily eaten, or fell sick, or any number of other potential issues. Evolutionary changes through natural selection generally only happen over millions of years due to this reason. To say that most people suffer due to some genetic factor, and that their failure to reproduce is having a meaningful, positive short-term impact on the human species is not just overlooking virtually every sociological data point - it’s overlooking basic evolutionary theory as well; animals try to live in part because the more living different individuals, the better their species’ likelihood to survive.

In the wild it’s not uncommon for a gene that was heavily selected for under a certain environment to suddenly be ill-suited for a new environment. Mammoths were well suited to a cold ice-age climate, but died out relatively quickly when weather warmed up. It’s humans who attribute evolution to “upward” momentum, when really it’s simply lateral change over time, only becoming more suited to whatever arbitrary conditions the creature is currently subjected to, rather than improving any “objective” fitness.

In the end, genetic variety is the most effective way for a species to survive, because any number of different selective factors can suddenly make any particular trait essential for survival and reproduction. For example, baby seals with “ugly” coats ended up having an incredibly fortunate genetic variation when humans decided to massacre them for their fine furs, and now the species has survived in part due to something that otherwise would have been deemed by us to be a meaningless, or even undesirable, variation. Hitler’s actions were not natural selection - they were, like the baby seals, a form of artificial selection; the arbitrary culling of genetic variations that were seen, by one man’s opinion, as “inferior.”

If Hitler and other eugenicists truly believed that human suffering were simply the natural form of evolution, they would have no need to take action into their own hands; if people who are genetically inferior are destined to die, then simply let them - no need for concentration camps and genocide. Their talking points are nothing more than half-baked justifications using data that’s cherry-picked at best, and simply made-up at worst, to allow them to force evolution to take unnatural pathways. If they succeeded, it would simply bottleneck our genetic variation and make us less suited for any given environment - not more.

Haagel,

Tell that to the tens of millions killed in the early twentieth century as a result of these ideologies. It wasn’t just the Nazi weirdos. Lots of prominent European and American scientists and politicians were advocating Social Darwinism. Francis Crick is still pushing it, and who knows more about the science than him?

Signtist,

Watson and Crick were fine scientists, but their discovery of the double helix structure was largely due to them looking at Rosalind Franklin’s unpublished data and completely omitting her name from their announcement of its discovery. They were certainly not shining examples of scientific excellence or integrity, and I consider most geneticists I know to be well beyond their capabilities.

Haagel,

Thank you for sharing your perspective. I find it very interesting. You’ve given me some things to think about. 🙏🏼

prole,

I understand it just fine, it’s called cognitive dissonance. And you’re correct, I doubt their ability to do their job as a scientist.

NOSin,

Very scientific answer, nice.

prole,

I’m sure you think you dunked on me or something, but… Ehhhh

NOSin,

Stop proving that you aren’t here to discuss, but to “win” debates and start ignoring me, thank you

eatthecake,

From wikipedia:

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things.[1] According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.[1][2] The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

Religious scientists do not experience cognitive dissonance if they don’t view religion and science as incompatible, and apparently many of them don’t. Cognitive dissonance is not the same as hypocrisy. Some of those scientists may have experienced cognitive dissonance in the past but they have long since found a way of reconciling the scientific method with a belief in god.

Signtist,

This is the real issue. Sure, science and religion COULD exist at the same time, but science is all about not making assumptions where you can instead build data, and heavily distrusting anything you can’t build data for. Religion is specifically designed to never be tested. It can never be meaningfully supported or negated through observable mediums, which makes it the antithesis to science regardless of their potential coexistence.

Haagel,

kuhna

According to the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, making assumptions and dismissing contradictory data is a regrettable but very common part of the scientific process that eventually results in a shift in the paradigm of thinking. Every scientific theory that we know today has gone through these phases and will likely continue to change in the future.

Signtist,

Humans are fallible, yes, and we do have biases that inevitably worm their way into our data and corrupt it. It’s one of the greatest reasons why we’ll never have real truth - only an approximation of it. However, that is not a reason to accept biases as an integral part of the scientific process. They are something we need to incessantly strive to minimize, specifically to keep the cycle you showed to a minimum; it’s a cycle of the failures of science, not the inherent process of it.

Haagel,

I wish I shared your optimism, my friend. Biases are increasing in the post-truth era, even in academia. That is a measurable fact.

Signtist,

All the more reason to never treat them as inevitable. It’s not a bad thing to both accept that we’ll never fully overcome them, but to try our hardest anyway - that’s what keeps them to a minimum. If we were to stop trying to avoid them, the scientific process would degrade even more.

Haagel,

Avoid what? Biases?

I agree with Thomas Kuhn that the bias is intrinsic. I think that his description of paradigm shift is a positive one, borne out of an era of conflicting data and intense argumentation.

Thesis and antithesis give rise to the a synthesis which becomes the next thesis, so on and so forth until our self inflicted nuclear apocalypse.

Signtist,

Avoid biases, yes. We can say “current data supports X,” and make whatever real-world decisions we need to make, while still accepting that future data may very well completely disprove that notion. It’s bad science to say “current data supports X, so Y is wrong,” but it’s also bad science to say “Yeah, I know current data supports X, but my gut says Y is true even without data, and that’s enough for me.”

That’s what I see more and more often in society recently; people are seeing that biases are something that can’t truly be avoided, so they’re accepting them instead, allowing themselves to completely abandon data in place of biases. When you catch yourself believing something is true even when data doesn’t currently support it, forgive yourself, as you’re human, but don’t allow yourself to continue believing that thing.

Haagel,

Well said. It takes a lot of honest introspection to determine why we believe a certain set of data instead of another set.

Tar_alcaran,

You can be all sorts of religious and be a scientist.

But the moment you start to claim anything from one of the popular holy books is literally true, you become a massive hypocrite.

But there is no disconnect between deism and science.

Klear,

You’re moving the goalposts now. This in not what the comment above said.

mohammed_alibi,

Its interesting to see your post to be so controversial. People who thinks all scientists are atheists either just don’t know any scientists or never been out in the real world. There’s really no difference between scientists and any regular population. I’m a engineer and in my group of about 40 engineers, many of us are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and some Atheists. We don’t let religion interfere with our work, and there’s no conflicts with each other. We do a mix of R&D in our work, and we build software and hardware that gets used by millions of consumers daily.

Haagel,

I agree with you. I think this is a result of the New Atheist preaching of guys like Dawkins and Hitchens. They’re rather crude and provacative in their anti-theism and their followers subsequently have a pretty simplistic view of a complex subject.

Of course, there are even more religious fundamentalists doing exactly the same rabble-rousing. It behooves us to ignore all extremists.

Hyperreality,

Bit of a tangent, but from what I can tell the language barrier (and cold war history) really doesn't do Russia any favours. Because so many Russians speak poor English, they're effectively cut off from the English speaking world.

Obviously, the Anglosphere has more than enough weird conspiracies, and there is some bleed through, but Russia has surprisingly popular stuff like Fomenko's New Chronology. For those wondering:

The new chronology is a pseudohistorical conspiracy theory proposed by Anatoly Fomenko who argues that events of antiquity generally attributed to the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece and Egypt actually occurred during the Middle Ages, more than a thousand years later. The conspiracy theory further proposes that world history prior to AD 1600 has been widely falsified to suit the interests of a number of different conspirators including the Vatican, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian House of Romanov, all working to obscure the "true" history of the world centered around a global empire called the "Russian Horde"

shadmere,

Phantom time conspiracies are my favorite kind of dumbass conspiracies.

Sarmyth,

Whoa, that’s a fun one! Thanks for sharing! I love reading about these really different conspiracy theories.

andrew_bidlaw, (edited )

In the 80s and 90s people were so confused they believed in all kinds of scams. Charged water before the TV, gave money to financial pyramids, believed their kids dead in Afgan and Chechnya could be brought to life for a little donation, even japanese death cult Ayum Sinrikyo was filmed staying with Brejhnev and USSR got more of his followers than Japan itself. Some of these ceased to exist but some are still there, including that idiot, Dugin and others. One of the top programs on the TV in the 10s was an initially sceptical challenge show of self-named witches, mages, extrasensorically gifted people, that run for many seasons, and with time charlatans themselves started to use it as a kind of promotion to their services kek.

From all of them, at least Fomenko is too absurd to most and genuinely funny in how he intertwines random historical events and his own marasm. But all of them should go to court to be honest. Their success is just a symptom of bigger problems, but they further enable people’s idiotism and live in luxury extorting them.

Tar_alcaran,

Charged water before the TV,

Hah, i know at least one American preacher and one Dutch medium who did the same nonsense. Seems like it was quite the fad.

GONADS125,

This is the brain drain in effect. Scientists and intellectuals fled russia when the war with Ukraine began and the sanctions were incoming.

prowess2956,

How long until this guy finds his way to Florida?

Candelestine,

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Yeah, I don’t think they care.

Anyone else find it funny how the values bleed over in both directions? It’s westerners that would complain about discrimination, in Russia, that’s just life. Life is hard, so no whining, more or less. Off to the front lines with you.

xc2215x,

A rare time I agree with Russia.

Diplomjodler,

How did that numpty ever end up in the Academy of Science in the first place?

rustyfish,
@rustyfish@lemmy.world avatar

Well it’s Russia so I’m gonna guess it was nepotism.

Ugurcan,

Nepotism also comes with future immunity in oligarchies though.

skillissuer,
@skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

maybe he was banned from academia in soviet times for being a religious nutjob, and then he shown that “political discrimination get into any position free” card and they let him in no questions asked

andrew_bidlaw,

Top guys are aging. Maybe he sold them an idea thet he can fix it? I mean, there’s many gossips about rich men turning from cosmetic surgery and sports to all kinds of fake science and mysticism just to stay there a little longer.

macrocephalic,

I’m guessing you’re not from America.

Diplomjodler,

Fortunately not

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