rosac said:
militant aetheists. Seriously, you aren't high and mighty for not believing in a deity. There's no need to rub stuff like "OMFG you're wrong, because science!" It annoys me even more when said people don't fully understand the theory/research they are quoting, and thus are following the words of a book without questioning it at all. Sound familiar?
Note: I am subscribed to the view that science is becoming a religion. This is my opinion, and one that is shared by many sociologists. This is incredibly subjective and open to opinion.
Also, people saying to me "You study psychology/sociology? Why don't you do real sciences like physics?"
1. define a real science for me.
2. I admit that sociology is not the most scientific of subjects, but it still revolves around theories, and the testing/reimagining/rethinking of these theories.
3. Psychology is, apart from social psychology, generally regarded as a science.
4. And finally, even if you don't agree that it's a science, you can't help but deny that psychological and sociological research are important, with a lot of mental illnesses, even those that are very similar, receiving different labels and different ways of dealing with them. As for sociology, a lot of social policy instigated by governments is influenced by social research (at least in the western world)
I can't begin to describe how much I'm annoyed by the bad arguments on both sides of the Theism/Atheism debate. I suspect both sides see these people in much the same way; they're like annoying children who just want attention, and we wish they'd be quiet and let the grown ups do the talking. Sadly, I find myself pointing out bad arguments on both sides. My opinion on the 'science as a religion' thing is simple; the actual enterprise of science is not like a religion (and there are many arguments for this around, which I feel no need to reiterate, but it's basically by definition). However, people tend to flock towards sources of authority, without personally questioning the source of that authority. It's these people who aren't actually part of the scientific enterprise that have 'faith' (if you like) in science. However, I feel for some of these people it boils down to 'have faith in rational inquiry and logic based reasoning' or 'have faith in religious thinking).
As for the 'What is a science' thing; much as I may make jokes about Biology being a squishy science, if a field is applying the scientific method, it is science. I think maybe this idea of things being 'soft sciences' comes from the complexity of what's being studied; sociology and psychology both study vastly complex systems, and inherent in this are many assumptions which may colour perceptions. This certainly is present in other fields (even Maths), but it has less of an impact (because, in my opinion, the more 'fundamental' fields produce less subjective results).
kibbitz2000 said:
So for physics and evolution, what's the most common things that you see people getting wrong?
For evolution:
Again, I'm no biologist, so my gripes here are reasonably simple.
Firstly, people seem to think Evolution is random. It is not; perhaps mutations are random, but natural selection is not. One of the (simplistic, no doubt) analogies I like for evolution is that in the vehicle that is Evolution, natural selection is the engine, and mutations the fuel.
Secondly, I've seen some try to argue that Evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics (no increase in entropy, some even try to say a decrease in entropy). This simply belies an imperfect understanding of thermodynamics; living systems maintain their ordered states by disordering their environment.
Finally, some people seem to think that there are distinct and discrete evolutionary states; that the chicken was the result of some definite previous species, rather than some entity that was almost identical genetically. Evolution is a continuous and gradual process!
For physics;
This... is a very long list. A select few are;
'Relativistic mass' - the idea that mass changes with velocity, invoked in order to explain why objects with mass can only approach the speed of light asymptotically by high school physics teachers. This is not what is going on. What is going on is much more fundamental, and does not require what seems like mystical mass. What happens here is that people try to invoke E=mc^2 to explain this, but that equation is only valid for matter at rest. The full equation is E^2 = (m_0*c^2)^2 + (p*c)^2, where m_0 is the rest mass, and p is the momentum. Only in the case where the momentum is zero do we get the familiar E = mc^2. What this tells us is that the relationship is between energy and momentum (which is not necessarily p = mv !) is what changes, not the relationship between energy and mass.
That the seasons arise due to the elliptical nature of Earth's orbit about the Sun (i.e. summer when the Earth is closer to the Sun) - in short, a complete load of crap and easy to show as false (especially for those of us that live in the Southern Hemisphere).
That heavier objects fall faster than light objects - this one's not such of a big deal, because it has a lot to do with every day experience; however, in the absence of any other forces, gravity will accelerate objects of different masses by the same amount.
That black holes are cosmic vacuum cleaners - the best thing for this is a counter-example; if I were to replace the Sun with a black hole of the same mass, Earth's orbit would not change. There'd be some very minor changes due to radiation pressure, and we'd all freeze to death, but our orbit would be just dandy.
And so on...
