bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
- Messages
- 36,224
- Gender
- He/Him
- Basic Beliefs
- Strong Atheist
Example: Why is the sky blue?
Theist: Because God made it blue and do you know why its blue?
Scientist: The sky is blue because certain portions/wavelengths of the light spectrum reaching the Earth gets scattered by dust and moisture in the atmosphere, and these wavelengths correspond to the part of the color spectrum we call blue.
Theist: Yes that's right.
The reason that the sky is blue is because of Rayleigh Scattering.
The difference between Lord Rayleigh's explanation and the theists statement that 'God made it blue', is that Rayleigh's explanation allows us to understand other related phenomena, and to predict the behaviour of specific wavelengths of light in given conditions.
'God made the sky blue' is in no way helpful to an engineer trying to design an efficient optical fibre communications system, such as the one that is carrying this message from me to you.
In contrast, Rayleigh's description and quantification of the scattering effects of various molecules on different wavelengths of light is very helpful to that engineer. And his work has other applications, and advises other parts of the body of scientific knowledge.
The two explanations are qualitatively different - both give the answerer the feeling of having known something - but only one represents actual knowledge, and the difference lies in the ability for the answer to be applied to other systems than the one being discussed.
'God made the sky blue' is a valueless observation. If you take that away, all of the benefits of knowing about Rayleigh's work still remain; But take away Rayleigh, and you are left with an answer that takes you nowhere.