skepticalbip
Contributor
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2004
- Messages
- 7,304
- Basic Beliefs
- Everything we know is wrong (to some degree)
Yup; Science acceptance of theories is always conditional. Religious belief is always unconditional.But there's a difference between believing your scientific theory is true, and believing your religion is true. A proper scientist always tries to consider all the things that might lead him into error, and will accept it if other scientists show him an error he didn't consider. (I won't say scientists always do this gracefully, but they do it anyway.) Science involves putting your hypotheses out in public, and let others attempt to shoot holes into your ideas. It may be that small holes can be patched, and the hypothesis modified to be more bulletproof; but no matter how beautiful your theory, you don't cling to it if ugly facts demonstrate it's mistaken.
Uncle Albert had a good summary of the scientific mindset.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
~ Albert Einstein