Comments on: Recognizing false arguments http://www.goatstar.org A guide from an ex-Christian to Bible errors, Bible contradictions, Bible atrocities, etc... as well as general problems with Christian beliefs Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:30:02 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Arnold Archibald http://www.goatstar.org/false-arguments/comment-page-1/#comment-63992 Arnold Archibald Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:55:10 +0000 http://www.goatstar.org/?page_id=13#comment-63992 I recently encountered an "appeal to ignorance" case of which the core, word for word, was "...science cannot explain everything." The 'will' of humanity comes from it's 'hopes' and 'fears' and thus all action is driven by emotional delusions. The young lady in question had had her hopes and fears driven by her educational underachievment and church agenda to believe that investigation into science was a futile endeavour. It was apparent that she had taken the easy route because of her inability to understand science and had succumb to her family's, the church's and its parish's ability to manipulate emotions using a simple reward/punishment social hierarchy system. So many people don't see that science is not about lab-coated nerds but is a translation of the word 'knowledge' (meaning "to know") and thus is 'all systems of structured, recorded, reinforced and reproducable observational data'. It is true that science cannot explain everything, because, among many things, it is in its infancy (set back by many religions), and at no point attempts to say it can explain everything, it doesn't move in mysterious ways because it doesn't have a will or emotional agenda, it simply explains what it can for the time being until the knowledge we have is used to understand more. Part of its structure is rationality. If something cannot be explained it doesn't mean that it doesn't have a rational underlying natural mechanism, there may still be an answer of which we, above all, must not presume. Thus we theorize (use imagination coupled with the structures of existing knowledge) so that a way of getting the answer can be reached in a reproducable way. Perhaps most give up because there is so much science to learn, this is not an excuse to completely debunk it. I recently encountered an “appeal to ignorance” case of which the core, word for word, was “…science cannot explain everything.”
The ‘will’ of humanity comes from it’s ‘hopes’ and ‘fears’ and thus all action is driven by emotional delusions.
The young lady in question had had her hopes and fears driven by her educational underachievment and church agenda to believe that investigation into science was a futile endeavour.
It was apparent that she had taken the easy route because of her inability to understand science and had succumb to her family’s, the church’s and its parish’s ability to manipulate emotions using a simple reward/punishment social hierarchy system.

So many people don’t see that science is not about lab-coated nerds but is a translation of the word ‘knowledge’ (meaning “to know”) and thus is ‘all systems of structured, recorded, reinforced and reproducable observational data’.
It is true that science cannot explain everything, because, among many things, it is in its infancy (set back by many religions), and at no point attempts to say it can explain everything, it doesn’t move in mysterious ways because it doesn’t have a will or emotional agenda, it simply explains what it can for the time being until the knowledge we have is used to understand more.
Part of its structure is rationality.
If something cannot be explained it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a rational underlying natural mechanism, there may still be an answer of which we, above all, must not presume.
Thus we theorize (use imagination coupled with the structures of existing knowledge) so that a way of getting the answer can be reached in a reproducable way.
Perhaps most give up because there is so much science to learn, this is not an excuse to completely debunk it.

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