Buy Motilium Without Prescription, Whether through the inane and ridiculous rambling of well-meaning religious scientists or the outright lies and misrepresentations of creationists and other pseudo-scientists, the notion of science being somehow faith-based has become deeply embedded in the public perception of science. As an illustration of this notion, one need only look at Paul Davies' well-known article "Taking Science on Faith, Motilium discount," a tragic collection of poor argument, Online buy Motilium without a prescription, equivocation, and bad theology masquerading as physics.
Davies' arguments in the piece are representative of the position that science is somehow faith-based, Motilium in canada. Though the article is full of red herrings that really have no bearing on whether science is somehow justified through faith, Buying Motilium online over the counter, it does touch on the well-worn argument about scientific presupposition. In Davies' words:
All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed, Buy Motilium Without Prescription. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, Motilium in uk, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, Cod online Motilium, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.
At first glance the argument appears to be reasonable. After all, Motilium tablets, science does indeed proceed on the basis of various assumptions. Order Motilium from United States pharmacy, In fact, it is worse than even Davies describes, for it isn't just an assumption that the universe is ordered, order Motilium no prescription, but also an assumption that any empirical, Motilium medication, tested claim is true. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, Owing to deep, epistemic limitations, we simply do not possess the capacity to know truths about reality with absolute certainty, and thus we can only formulate tentative theories that must continually be tested against observations. In a sense, then, Motilium for sale, all science is based on assumptions because we lack the capacity for logical certainty in empirical matters. Rx free Motilium, But it is important to note that these are not baseless assumptions; they are based in evidence, observation, and probability, buy Motilium from canada. Davies acknowledges this fact when he says, Motilium in usa, "And so far this faith has been justified."
And that, of course, is the problem with the argument, Motilium san diego. The scientific "faith" has been justified. That is, the word faith in this context is not itself a justification as it is in religious contexts, Buy Motilium Without Prescription. Where to buy Motilium, It is a testable hypothesis. Scientists may very well assume that the laws of physics will continue to hold true five minutes into the future, but this is an assumption that can be supported with evidence and justified, buy Motilium online cod. After five minutes, Where can i find Motilium online, we can observe whether the laws of physics still apply.
The same is not true for faith as it applies to religious contexts. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, When a religious person claims to have faith in God, what you find is that this is often thought to be a justification for God's existence. That is, Motilium to buy online, a person of faith wouldn't say their faith is justified; they'd say that their faith is a justification for God's existence. Where can i buy cheapest Motilium online, When a person of faith is asked to explain why he believes in God, he does not list off empirical evidence supporting the existence of God as if he were a physicist adducing support for his physical theories. Rather, real brand Motilium online, the theist will explain that he knows God exists through faith. Buy Motilium online without prescription, This is the sort of fideistic type of faith that has taken root in religious argument. A fideist---or a believer in a transcendant, unknowable God---can only appeal to faith as justification, not the justified faith that Davies attributes to scientists, Buy Motilium Without Prescription. Faith in this religious sense is not something that can be tested or based on evidence---unlike the "faith" that is attributed to scientists. This conception of religious faith goes back as far as Aquinas, sale Motilium, who invoked it to account for the specific qualities of his Christian God (le.g., Motilium to buy, being born of a virgin and being of triune nature) that could not be addressed by his evidence-based arguments (like the cosmological or teleological arguments). The difference between these two types of faith---justified faith and the religious faith as justification---is extreme, and those who assert that science is based on faith are unwise to use equivocation in an attempt to blur the distinction, saturday delivery Motilium.
So the problem with the argument---and this is a problem for many of the ill-defined, Over the counter Motilium, amorophous terms in religion, like the word god itself---is that it perpetuates a blatant equivocation concerning the word faith. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, It is obvious that there are senses of the word that are compatible with science. For instance, Motilium from canadian pharmacy, when I say that I have faith in my friend, Motilium in mexico, I mean that I trust my friend (and this trust is based on my knowledge of his or her behavior), and certainly one can trust science in just the same way. I have faith in science's capacity to improve medical care and so on, Motilium in india, and this is nothing more than trust based on evidence and experience. Motilium prescriptions, But to imply that religious faith, or faith as justification, is applicable to science is laughable and wholly wrong, buy no prescription Motilium online. Assumptions are not a justification in the sciences. Evidence is the justification, in accordance with this thing called "reality" that is frequently neglected by metaphysicians and theologians, Buy Motilium Without Prescription. Motilium in us, Of course, it seems unlikely that Davies himself endorses any fideistic faith-based conception of God. His appeals to the anthropic principle and other empirical observations mark him as a theist who does not make appeals to religious faith, Motilium prices, but to evidence, Where can i buy Motilium online, in support of his God. It follows from this that Davies' thesis is either unremarkable and trivial (yes, science and religion are both compatible with nonreligious uses of the word faith) or else wholly wrong (no, buy Motilium online with no prescription, science is not based on the religious sense of faith---faith as justification---and your own belief in God is not based on this sense of faith, Motilium pills, either).
Much of the article makes a big fuss about the laws of physics and their implications for science. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, For instance, he says:
The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, Motilium trusted pharmacy reviews, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, Motilium craiglist, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from. And why do they have the form that they do?
Davies asks these questions not expecting a definitive answer, online buying Motilium hcl, thinking that they are deep and profound and reveal some great metaphysical truth about our universe, Motilium gel, ointment, cream, pill, spray, continuous-release, extended-release, and ultimately implying that some sort of God (i.e., an entity that requires no further explanation) is necessary to explain this. But the truth is, Motilium overseas, these are not deep or profound questions, Order Motilium online c.o.d, and there is a rather simple and definitive answer. In fact, the answer is so simple and obvious that I am quite amazed that a physicist like Davies is unable to see it staring him right in the face, Buy Motilium Without Prescription. Where do the laws of physics come from. They come from our observations of physical entities, Motilium in japan. Why do they take the form they do. Where can i order Motilium without prescription, Because they are the best models and representations of observed behaviors and actions. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, Davies can't see these answers, of course, because of his metaphysical baggage. This is where he displays his first real use of faith as justification, or religious faith, delivered overnight Motilium. He assumes, Buy Motilium without prescription, without any evidence or reason, that the physical laws that describe physical entities exist in their own right, over and above the entities they describe, buy Motilium online no prescription. That is, Next day Motilium, he endorses a sort of childish metaphysical Platonism that is scientifically unsupportable. He is making the child-like error of reifying a description of a relationship. For instance, if I were to tell Davies that there is air between my fingertips and my keyboard, he wouldn't assert that air, my fingertips, and between exist, Buy Motilium Without Prescription. Between is only a description of the relationship between my fingers and the keyboard, buy Motilium from mexico. In the same sense, Motilium buy, it wouldn't be reasonable to argue that the number four exists in its own right because you've seen four apples. What exists is a certain quantity of apples, not the number four that describes that quantity, buy Motilium no prescription. So the problem with Davies' reasoning, Purchase Motilium online no prescription, ironically, is that it is supported by faith in the religious sense. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, The "laws of physics" are simply descriptions of particles colliding and other physical events, not reified entities sitting in some ethereal platonic realm. This is nothing more than unsupportable metaphysics of the sort that scientists simply do not practice, fast shipping Motilium. Davies may as well ask physicists to explain Kant's noumenal world, Buy Motilium without a prescription, or Hegel's Absolute, or Spinoza's God or Nature. Sorry, Motilium over the counter, my friend, Buy generic Motilium, but scientists aren't metaphysicians. They expect their hypotheses and theories to be justified or capable of justification. Say it with me kids: WE DEMAND EVIDENCE, NOT FAITH, Buy Motilium Without Prescription.
Davies then goes on to advance the anthropic principle as an argument, Motilium paypal, though he is careful to leave God out of it for whatever reason. Buy cheap Motilium, Davies sums up the argument like so:
Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws, purchase Motilium. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, Ordering Motilium online, life would almost certainly not exist.
First, is this even true. Perhaps if you change one variable and keep all the rest the same, buy Motilium online with no prescription, the universe would collapse into some void without form or structure, Order Motilium online c.o.d, but that doesn't mean the laws of physics can't be "any old ragbag of rules". Buy Motilium Without Prescription, What if ALL the variables are different, but retain the same sorts of proportions we see in our current universe. Would that produce life. Are other forms of life that are unknown to us be possible in universes with alternative laws of physics, Motilium prices. What reason is there to suppose no other laws of physics could support life. Ordering Motilium online, Indeed, it seems that it would be possible to create a universe with laws of physics that are more conducive to life than our current universe, which seems best suited to the production of stars rather than life, Motilium in usa. Most of the universe is quite hostile to life, so it seems we are wrong to see this as a "Goldilocks universe" ideally suited for life, Buy Motilium Without Prescription.
Of course, there is another obvious rebuttal to the anthropic principle. Theories of string theory that propose multiverses more than adequately explain our ideal situation by positing an infinite multitude of other universes, each with their own laws of physics. It shouldn't be surprising that one universe out of infinite may have a physics that is conducive to life. Davies, naturally, dismisses multiverse theories for all the wrong reasons, asserting that they merely "dodge the whole issue" because they don't explain the ultimate "laws of physics" that would undergird it all. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, The poor man is still unable to see that he's mixing his metaphysics with his physics, and hence that this is not an adequate scientific criticism. The scientific criticism of multiverse theories is that they are still in the hypothesis stage. As yet, there isn't enough evidence to solidify any of these theories that attempt to explain things beyond the Big Bang or even beyond our own universe. Davies does not advance this criticism, though, because he most likely realizes it applies equally as well to his silly notion of God. Because multiverse theories and other proposals haven't been adequately tested, it won't do to just attribute everything to God. The best thing to do is simply admit that we do not currently have answers to questions concerning things that go beyond the Big Bang, Buy Motilium Without Prescription.
What is strange is that Davies almost seems halfway aware of the problems with the religious arguments he relies on:
Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.
No, religion and science are NOT based on faith. Your conception of science is based on faith, because you think it is appropriate to bring in your tired, platonic metaphysics into the question without any sort of support or evidence. You are correct to note, however, that belief in the existence of something outside the universe and totally unexplained and unknowable does NOT provide a complete account of physical existence. Buy Motilium Without Prescription, It is a shame, however, that this criticism only applies to your metaphysical conception of science, and not science as it is practiced by everyone else.
And now, I'll simply let Davies revel in his own ridiculousness:
If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.
No, my friend, it does not make a mockery of science to assert that the laws of physics don't require an ultimate, metaphysical explanation. They are explained by the very existence of the physical entities they model, you clown. What makes a mockery of science is to trace these reasons down to the bedrock of reality (and there's a reason it's called "the bedrock", because that's the bottom!), and then invent some deity (that also conveniently doesn't need to be explained itself) to "explain" a metaphysically muddled reification of physical laws. What makes the deity a mockery of science isn't that it absolves itself of ultimate explanation, however, but that there is absolutely no evidence to support such a conjecture. Once again, it comes down to the evidence. You'd think a scientist would know this by now.
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5 comments
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urbster1
23 February, 2009 at 12:36 PM (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Thank you! I get this kind of crap all the time from religious apologists, who love to assert that concepts like numbers are real, abstract entities that live somewhere. It’s almost the same reason that many of them are dualists when it comes to consciousness, and couldn’t believe that things such as numbers are simply descriptions of patterns that exist in our brains. Otherwise, how would they exist ontologically?? Same as the supposed “absolute moral law” that many claim can only come from god: what IS a moral law? Makes no fucking sense.
Ox
28 February, 2009 at 3:41 PM (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Interesting read. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Liew
25 March, 2009 at 8:37 PM (UTC -6) Link to this comment
“Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.”
Also there’s the simple fact that if the laws of physics were any different then observers like us might not exist at all to observe and attempt to explain the way the world works in those laws. The fact that we even exist to create these models of the universe requires the world to be precisely structured in a certain way. Hence the illusion that our existence “depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws”.
…You could probably phrase the above argument with greater precision. Haha…
casey
1 April, 2009 at 5:30 PM (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Ah, the anthropic principle:
See how the shape of the pothole is perfectly designed to hold this particular puddle of water? If the contours of the pothole were off by just the tiniest fraction then the puddle would not fit. It’s a miracle!
casey
1 April, 2009 at 5:37 PM (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Anthropic principle II:
“Particular puddle of water?” You mean there are other possible puddles? But surely they wouldn’t exist unless there also existed potholes especially designed to hold them.