Believing in dull, barren, soul-dead Scientific Materialism is everyone's right, but

[longship]

45. Well, here's this week's DU chair throwing argument.

Get it right at least.

Science is not a philosophy. It's a set of methods which seem to work pretty damned well. It not only wiped out diseases like Smallpox and provided the framework to do that (germ theory of disease -- thank you Pasteur), but it landed humans on the moon and a science laboratory on the surface of Mars. It found out that all life on Earth is related and subsequently discovered the mechanisms by which that occurred. Science makes predictions of future discoveries, often decades ahead of them, and with astounding precision.

Like everything humans do, science is not perfect, but that idea is also part of science. So it has built in self-correcting mechanisms. Yes, those too can be rickety and slow, but as Bill Nye said, "We get 'er done!"

Above all, science is a way of knowing things which is answerable, not to any personal authority or opinion, but to nature herself. And as anybody working at the cutting edge of science could tell you, Mother Nature can be a real bitch.

Those who would malign science, or characterize it by some made up shit, don't really understand what it is, and what it is not.