[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Fyron]

BM:
A few sad stories are not indicative of the whole of the scientific community. Scientists are people, after all. People make mistakes.

The theory of evolution is not a valid sample of science as a whole from which to base such sweeping statements about science being a kind of religion.

Evolution is not wrong. The evidence used in the past may well have been flawed, but so what. The currently accepted theory of evolution might not be 100% accurate, but neither were Newton's laws of gravitation. They only represented a special case of relativity. Once we learn more about genetics and such, we will be able to formulate a more precise theory of evolution. All evidence points to some sort of evolutionary processes. We of course do not fully understand them at the present time, but this is not a grounds to fully deny evolution. It is also not grounds to call science a type of religion. Religious beliefs are based off of: "We say it is this way, so it is this way". Scientific beliefs are based off of: "We see this evidence. We have a theory that the evidence seems to corroborate, amongst other theories. But, this one fits the evidence better than the others, so this theory looks like the best to use. Once we get more evidence, we can re-evaluate our theory, to see if we were right or not."

Since scientists are people, they are allowed to make mistakes. They try to minimize their errors, but they can not catch them all.