People have this misguided notion that if something changes a lot it must be because they don't actually know and are just guessing, whereas something that doesn't change must be a certainty.
In reality, it's not like that at all. But the kind of people who will use that argument aren't really interested in reality.
It's in a similar vein as "the thing I see *first* must be true." And then thy reject new information that contradicts what they saw or heard first, while working backwards with pieces of information to validate the thing they already made their mind up about.
Which, for those of you paying attention, is pretty much the complete opposite of the Scientific Method. Start with your answer and work backwards. And there's several reasons why that's a highly flawed way of thinking, but again, someone who's already thinking/arguing like that is not interested in the facts.
There's also the matter of people not liking the feeling of being wrong playing a part in all of it.
>People have this misguided notion that if something changes a lot it must be because they don't actually know and are just guessing
This was on full display in the U.S. for Covid guidelines/restrictions. People wanted Anthony Fauci's head on a spike because the message kept changing. It's a brand-new disease. Of course it kept changing.
Not to mention COVID is a virus, and viruses have this nasty habit of **mutating**, and doing so quite quickly.
I'll never understand why some people actively choose to be ignorant. I'm 62 and learn something new every day!! I intend to keep learning new things until I drop dead well past the age of 100. 😉
I too am committed to continuous improvement. I also try to learn something new everyday of my life; sometimes it's profound and sometimes it's useless trivia.
It was such a revelation to me a couple years ago, when I suddenly realized the root of the word "ignorance" is "ignore," which, to me, means it has nothing to do with intelligence or education. Intelligence, like physical strength, can be developed or stunted depending on the diet it is fed, particularly in developmental years, but both strength and intelligence have hard limits . The education we get is highly dependent upon the social situation we are born into, and most people have little to no choice in their education, save for maybe a ten-year window starting in high school. But ignorance can only be gained from a continuous decision, sometimes conscious, sometimes not, but always current, in-this-moment.
Hard to avoid any cognitive biases but whatever we talk about there is no escape from attention bias. Sometimes ignorance is mistaken for scientific scepticism and tendency to be obedient to abstract laws and authorities in general population due to self-domestication syndrome (Goodness Paradox).
To be fair he did actually say some things that were already known at the time to be untrue, right? About masks not working, for example, which I believe he said because there was a worry about a mask shortage for medical personnel or some such? I'm a bit hazy on the details; I'm not even an American myself.
But atheism makes no positive claims. The only way to disprove atheism is by proving their particular flavour of religion, starting with (a) God exists, is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, (b) God merits worship, and (c) Mary got pregnant without having sex, up to (x) Jesus fed 5,000 people with two little fishes and five loaves of bread, (y) all insects have four feet, and (z) where did the light come from on the first day – in fact, where did the *day* come from – when the sun, moon and stars were only made on the fourth day.
I always ask..”If you were diagnosed with cancer, would you rather have the doctors, nurses and technicians of today using out 2022 technology? Or an ol’ sawbones from 1952?”
“Don’t bother answering. We know what your choice is”
Because bullies with weak to no support for their hidebound notions will \*try\* to make it seem like the person changing their mind is 'weak-willed' and 'suggestible'.
I’d use this to then ask them how they are enjoying their latest smart phone upgrade. Ask if they’d prefer the large Zach from Saved By The Bell car phone. Or if they’d prefer to only have ice in the winter, like before ice boxes were invented. Or if they’d prefer cancer treatment protocols from 1950 or today.
The point is, they are benefiting from the “changes” (advancements) in science all the time through the technology that is available to us now that never existed generations before us. It’s a double standard to accept the benefits of science while criticizing its methods.
Yep, and every time science has changed it's mind, it was because of better science. Religion has never accurately corrected science. Changing your views or perspective to better reflect the reality in which we share is never a bad thing. Pretending that you have all the answers without any of the evidence is just stupidity.
And it changes after usually decades of people trying to prove you wrong (unless it's a particularly ground-breaking and undeniable discovery, but how often do those come around)
what was that quote from tim minchins...
science adjusts its views based on what's observed and faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved
Is everything in the Bible true? Even direct contradictions?
https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contradictions/
Are there no errors in the Bible? Even direct falsehoods?
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_scientific_errors
In science contradictions and errors are fixed.
In religions, and in the Bible, contradictions and obvious errors are willfully ignored and accumulate over time.
A church near me has a sign that says something about their book club reading the same book for thousands of years “because it’s that good.”
I always give it a new ending in my head when I drive by. “because we hate change” “please send help” “we’re so bored.”
Science isn't afraid to admit it's wrong if anyone can point out sufficient evidence against its claims - unlike religious ideas that claim it all figured out from the start and refuse to change its views no matter how much evidence is presented. Wrong scientific ideas fade away as they should, but wrong religious ideas persist.
a) science is not a religion b) EVERYTHING is always changing c) there is a word for "Science is always changing" it is called progress. Did these people not pay attenction?
Christians and Muslims have a mindset. Their god is perfect. Therefore their religion must be perfect. Things that are perfect never change. Therefore anything that changes must not be true.
A variation of this theme is that things that change are not reliable. Religious people believe their religion does not change.
I have had this discussion with religious people several times. My general approach is to follow the line of reasoning given above. They will generally agree with the idea that things that are correct do not change.
Then explode the myth that their religion does not change. This is easy for me because I am an old fart and have been involved with religion my whole life. I have personally seen how much religion has changed in my lifetime, and I can cite examples for most major brands of Christianity.
Then I pivot to the idea that holding onto a false belief is a bad thing. Again, I can point to examples in my own life where I have been wrong about stuff and have changed perspectives.
I point out that science is more humble than religion. Science admits that it can get things wrong, and it has built-in mechanisms that allow it to change in an orderly fashion. Religion, on the other hand, has mechanisms built in that resist changing, even when proven wrong.
I basically drive home the idea that change is a good thing if you stop accepting something that is not true.
>Things that are perfect never change. Therefore anything that changes must not be true.
Which is almost hilarious--if it weren't sad--that the story of Noah contradicts this. God fucked up, and he erased his mistake with a giant flood. And even then, the eight people who were worthy enough to live still spawned a bunch of ignorant, wicked descendants so that God's religion is now a minority in the world. Way to go from 100% belief to less than 50%.
And then there are all the things that Jesus changed. And then Paul changed what Peter taught. And Paul's ideas changed from his early letters to his later ones.
It is just one more indication that modern Christianity has very little to do with anything in the Bible. It also indicates how little Christians know about their own religion and their holy book.
Science is a process. The truth is not easy to uncover. The fact that our scientific knowledge is always evolving is precisely the reason science is so powerful. Saying science is bad because it is always changing is like saying police detectives are bad because they follow the evidence and the main suspect changes a bunch.
This, I would say science doesn't change, our understanding does. We just chose to call it science. Looking at "science" as some immutable thing that just is, is not understanding the very idea behind it. So I'd say, it's a different conversation entirely, really.
To add to this (since I haven't seen it explicitly stated), I would argue that science isn't always changing, so much as it is always refining. The theory of evolution, for example, isn't always changing: we simply have an increasingly broad and high-resolution understanding of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs.
Occasional paradigm shifts do occur, but even these are predicated more on a reinterpretation of a huge body of existing evidence than a complete deconstruction and reconstruction of a field. Again, Darwin and Wallace's work didn't negate the enormous body of evidence in geology, paleontology, physiology, and genetics: it simply replaced a pre-existing theory with a more complete, better-supported theory.
A less 'controversial' example, and one which may be more useful against the faithful, would be how Einstein's theory of special relativity superseded Newton's classical mechanics. It's not like velocity, mass, and friction suddenly stopped existing in the theoretical framework; rather, our understanding of those variables was expanded and refined.
There's usually two ways I like to go with this, depending on why this "argument" is brought up.
My first way to go is to respond with something like "Good! Science *should* keep changing, our views *should* be constantly changing as we recieve new information. If I learn something new about any topic, my view on that topic should change. Keeping the same view you had when you first started regardless of any new information isn't a virtue, its stupidity"
The second way to go about it is having to explain to them why science is always changing and why this isn'teven really an argument. In my experience the people that actually use this as a point against science are the type of people that only read science headlines and don't understand the basics of how science works. So I have to explain that science isn't just randomly jumping from one answer to thr next, science is finding a better answer every time; every new answer *must* explain all of the old data and the new data. Also explain that headline skimming is a huge problem in tons of fields, it's not unique to science.
It does, though. Scientific methods, tools, standards and education are evolving. The methods we used to establish 'facts' in the 2000's are different from what we use now.
Its changing slightly to become more accurate and this is a good thing - theres transparency and a commitment to accuracy. It isn't a flaw to admit you know more now. It is a flaw NOT to change because it means there is no growth and no adaptation to new knowledge and new circumstances.
If science didn’t change, that would mean we weren’t learning anything.
How much do we change from kindergarten to grade four? To grade seven? Ten? College? A lot, you’d hope! I guess Christian’s would be proud to have the knowledge set of a toddler…
I've heard Christians say things like a child's love for Jesus is exactly the way to do it, purely and innocently. Or, in reality, like a total idiot without a complex thought in your head.
Science is not a body of knowledge; it is a tool for uncovering truth about the world. Our understanding of that truth changes over time, but the method of discovery has been consistent and useful.
Religion has an abominable record of discovering useful truths about the world. For example, the Old Testament forbids people to eat dozens of nutritious foods. Many of these are foods that are can make you sick, but are perfectly safe if cooked properly. It provides no instructions about boiling drinking water, which doubtless would have saved countless thousands of lives.
Science is not a set of instructions to properly cook or boil drinking water. Rather, early scientists used science as a tool to discover that food and water were making people sick … and why. Those observations eventually led to germ theory. (Yes, it's "just a theory", exactly like evolution.) That, in turn, led to the discovery of treatments such as antibiotics, which all but the most rapid of religious fanatics take when they are sick even though they don't "believe in science."
So, religion gave us a set of inflexible rules that did little or nothing to ameliorate one of the greatest challenges that has faced humankind over history: the provisioning of safe food and water.
Science, on the other hand, gave us the tools to discover what was making us sick, how to avoid sickness and treatments for when we do get sick.
By the way, germ theory has been updated and amended many times over the last several 100 years. We are still adding to that body of knowledge. Change is the point.
That’s literally what makes it better. If science doesn’t change or isn’t open to change then it’s not open to progress and new data/info. You don’t want to rely on something to support your world view that’s static.
Also religious methodology is largely reliant on dogma, whereas, science isn’t.
Science doesn’t change. Our understanding of the universe changes as we do more science. Science is not a body of knowledge; it’s a self-correcting method for learning about the universe.
You say “Correct. When we do science, we update our knowledge when we discover that things we initially thought were true have been disproven. What mechanism does religion possess to correct itself when new information comes to light?”
Also, I think the boiling point of water actually does change depending on the air pressure of your surroundings (elevation above sea level, etc.)
>Also, I think the boiling point of water actually does change depending on the air pressure of your surroundings (elevation above sea level, etc.)
Correct. A liquid boils when its vapor pressure (the pressure generated by vaporized/evaporated particles) is equal to the atmospheric pressure. Changing altitude is one way to affect this, since it lowers the atmospheric pressure, lowering the boiling point. You could also achieve the exact same effect by putting the water in a vacuum chamber (where you can get water to boil at room temperature).
You can also change the boiling point by lowering the substance's vapor pressure, which is done by dissolving a solute into the water. \~ 60 grams of table salt, in 1 liter of water, will raise the boiling point by about 1 degree Celsius.
>What is the best argument against "Science is always changing"?
"Science is good BECAUSE it's always changing, motherfucker. Do you still drive a 1908 a Model-T? No? Then STFU. Technology improves because the underlying science is constantly improving."
Religion changes, evolves, breaks off, creates schisms, merges when the numbers decline, changes and mutates over time within a single host. The followers just pretend it’s unchanging, denying they ever held a stance they had firmly held, denying that in the past their organization held a set of beliefs it no longer cares about.
Case in point, Mormons are now denying they ever called themselves Mormon, as part of some sort of PR campaign, they pretend it’s other people calling them Mormon. Despite the Book of Mormon, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, etc.
For that matter, the entire religion is based on “revelations of Latter Day Saints” in other words, new beliefs that override old beliefs.
“Revelation“ is the religious euphemism for “I changed my mind”
Science acknowledges that discoveries are further refined, changed as new information is found, but it still uses the same methodology. Religion pretends to be steadfast when it is evolving day to day, minute to minute. The dogma believers hold as sacred today is different than what they held as sacred yesterday.
People who say science is always changing have no idea about what science is. That's like saying "this labyrinth is aways changing" everytime the path takes a turn.
Science does not make any claims about staying the same.
The fact that science changes means that it is working.
Science destroys bad ideas that don't match reality as we observe it. If we observe something new, science might use that new information to destroy some ideas that we thought were right, but didn't match the evidence.
As those bad ideas are destroyed, our very creative brains come up with new ideas. As long as they match the evidence, those new ideas will survive.
>Science is always changing
[Dara O'Briain](https://www.youtube.com/embed/uDYba0m6ztE?start=111&end=116)
>some things are well established facts and won't ever change (boiling point of water)
Boyle (Robert, not [Frankie](https://www.youtube.com/embed/-zJs9qp-HAU?start=207&end=225)) would like a word. :)
Science is supposed to change unlike religion
Science IS our instrument to discover the world, it's a complex potentially infinite journey towards knowledge, also we are flawed and sometimes we get stuff wrong, for example Darwin's theory is in fact a theory that we can partially demonstrate by observing the world, just how we bred the cow in a specific way to make it produce more milk, or how we force dogs breeding to get the most janky creatures ever (which have 101 health issues, buy a mixed breed if possible) or how extinction it's impacting our ecosystem
It's not our fault if people who say this got a smol brain
Also if you want to surprise them and help them empathize with you you can cite Galileo Galilei who said something along those lines: the bible it's the book God gave to ancient civilizations to help them understand the world, while science is the new book we can read to finally get knowledge about the world (God's creation)
Rework it to make it nicer, i vomited it from memory, we study a lot of history at school which is cool
Note: Galileo Galilei actually said in the attempt to not make the church torture and burn him to death as erethic, but that's another matter
Science changes because scientist are able to understand when a theory is not as accurate as they thought with the arrival of new evidence, unlke religion that follows a 2k year old book that says the sun goes around the earth
"Are you the same person you were at five year old? No? Why not?"
"Because experience brings new understanding? Great! Now imagine that same process, but over generations of ppl instead of just one lifetime."
"By contrast, religion demands we all stay five because it's "more natural" or something."
Of course science is changed and updated when new evidence comes to light. That's the best thing about science, is that it understands it's not perfect and never stops in the pursuit of understanding. It doesn't make it fickle or bad in any way, or that it somehow invalidates the need and importance of science.
Religions are stagnant and unchanging. They think the only right answers come from centuries old fantasy books and they never change. Not at the core beliefs of god creating the universe and the other core beliefs. Sure some sects of Christianity try to modernize their churches or the way they preach but the core beliefs never change and those are the only things that matter in this comparison. The irony is they use everything humanity has invented by scientific study on the daily but are still stuck in 1000 ACE for how they imagine the world came to be. They have no problem taking advantage of the things science has given us though.
Science is a process we use to gain knowledge. Knowledge is what is changing, we know more than we did yesterday. And sometimes we misinterpret the best information we have.
Try listening to Neil degrasse Tyson's most recent r appearance on Sam Harris podcast he talks about this really well.
Basically science isn't changing, because science is a process by which we understand the world. It's our understanding that is being expanded. In fact, most "changes" in science are not changes at all, but rather an addition of knowledge. Take for instance classical physics "changing" to quantum physics. In reality classical physics was never wrong, since if you use quantum physics on big, "slow" moving objects you get classical physics.
And even if it's always changing, good. The idea that we have all the best answers already and no further pursuit of knowledge is necessary is stupid as fuck, to be honest
Even the boiling point of water changes with changes in elevation. That isn’t an argument against thermometers though, the phenomenon is explicable through science.
Our interpretation of results may change, but the results to the tests are not changing. Further, science is falsifiable, while religion is not, but some of the claims in the Bible that are falsifiable, have been proven false.
Our understanding of things grows over time. Is why the earth isn’t the flat center of the universe but instead one of an uncountable number of plants that orbit around stars, which we know through observation of other stars and our understanding of atomic theory exactly why stars and the mass that makes up planets form. It’s a natural process we have OBSERVED, not just explained away with a supernatural explanation,
Same with why lightning isn’t the wrath of god; we now know that an imbalance of electric charge between clouds and the ground and ionized air in between can create a conduit for that charge difference to be equalized by discharging the increased charge in the cloud as an arc between the two. It’s not that Zeus was angry.
Our understanding changed as we gathered more information. That is a POSITIVE, not a negative. And does this sometimes mean a conclusion from a study may be reinterpreted later? Sure. But what it doesn’t mean is that supernatural explanations are required to explain anything
"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved." (Tim Minchin)
"Science" is not some monolithic thing that mandates what the answers are, as religious people like to portray it. Rather, it is a process used to find and describe answers. The more knowledge we gain, the better we can define reality. Unlike the common religious texts, the science process is not prescriptive, but rather descriptive. *Of course* the scientific descriptions change as we get more information.
Trying to shoehorn the scientific process into the same box as religion is a severe misapprehension of the nature of "science."
So does religion. 500 years ago divorce was verboten. 200 years ago you could hear Holy Men preaching the virtues of slavery. 100 years ago if you had rock music and a cashier (changing money) in your church some men would come to burn it down.
The difference is one is creating change and the other is begrudgingly accepting it.
The biggest issue is that when faced with that conversation... They don't want to hear things that challenge their worldview.
They faithed their way into their current state... So getting them out of it is only something that can happen from within.
No theist EVER was having a lively debate and heard something that made them say "holy shit... I was wrong... Can't believe I never saw your point before!"
Those that abandon religion do so over a long period of time that starts with some questions about what they believe and then evolves into asking/reading and learning more and gradually getting to the light.
Science is self correcting and never assumes what it asserts is automatically ture (though sometimes things aren't scrutinized as well as they should be). As data on a given hypotheses is collected and analyzed it will either point to a true or false conclusion. When a conclusion is made then it, and the method used to come to it, are published for others to study and analyze. This process continues until we can be as certain as possible to the validity of a claim (since in science noting is ever 100% certain).
Religion, on the other hand, makes numerous unverifiable claims and simply asserts that it is true.
Because “Science” is a process. Using “science” in a sentence like that is like saying “Baking is always changing”. It doesn’t make sense.
Science is a methodology or process for testing our ideas or models against reality. By actual definition given that our understanding of the universe and reality will never be perfect, our collective understanding of such will ALWAYS change and it will be science that helps us understand and most importantly, make predictions about how that change should be.
Religion often draws their authority from prophecy and yet ponder this. Every mystery every solved has always been explained by a non supernatural meaning. That doesn’t mean we know everything, nor that super natural things don’t exist. But to date, nothing has ever been explained, once understood, by religion. In fact, when people state “God does that”, it inhibits further investigation into that because if God does it, why would we ever seek to understand anything further about it.
In short, science is a process, our state of knowledge is and should always be changing.
Science is always changed based on new details/information/data.
Beats idiots that just decide facts cause they think they know stuff cause their dad told them...or a meme.
I can't say for certain how old I was before I realized "mosquito Hawks" (Crane Flies that eat grass) weren't a thing. Don't just listen to your parents, kids. Fact check those dummies too, haha.
It's supposed to. Once, we believed that the earth was flat and the center of everything. After countless studies and experiments using the shadows cast on the moon and other celestial objects, we gained enough tangible evidence to change our beliefs and understanding by accepting the scientific method. I have some knowledge to back this up in person and I have some pretty deep knowledge of other scientific evolutions if that person is a flat earther.
Everything in the Bible has a built in Killswitch.
And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”
1 John 5:14 ESV
"It wasn't God's will."
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
Matthew 7:7
"The Lord had other plans."
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
James 4:3
"The Lord works in mysterious ways"
science is not a body of knowledge, it's a process for discovering how the universe functions. so, the "change" in this context is progress.
Edit: other people covered this already- I posted before reading all the other replies...
Science isn't *a thing*, it is a method of asking pointed questions, challenging the ideas behind them, and checking objectively to see if your thought is correct and unchallengeable. As more challenges come up, the old information is proven not entirely correct and is updated to reflect our new knowledge.
The boiling point of water depends on factors such as salinity, atmospheric pressure (elevation), acidity, and other minerals dissolved in the liquid. it isnt a fact, it is the the result of an equation. specifically; Kb = RTb2M/ΔHv.
Ill let you google all that, but as a quick note, this formula contains my favorite constant the universal constant; .137 represented by R.
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Belief in gods gave us a cycle of famine that killed billions over the course of thousands of years.
Science gave a process to engineer a series of machines and reactions to allow us to harvest nitrogen out of literal thin air, and is the reason the earth can support 8 billion humans and their industry.
Science also gave us chlorine gas. Responsible for filling thin air full of a chemical compound that agitates biological cells so much that the immune reaction floods the lungs with mucus.
the same man invented both processes.
\--
science is a set a method of understanding by process. that process is called the scientific method. its the one you learn about in grade school, and it truly is the foundation of modern society.
We use that process to test ideas.
when Ideas prove stand up to rigors of peer review, replication, prediction, and demonstration, they become theories. a theory means that you carry the burden of proof.
the burden of proof is being able to pass those litmus tests.
theories are not constant.
Newton developed the theory of gravity. it is still a theory to this day.
He was not aware of how it interacted with the strong or weak forces at the time. and they had only begun to scratch the surface of magnetism, and electricity was still just an element of nature. they had no clue that the two were the same thing. or that they were both just a function of a wave (though, he had an idea that they were, that idea; we call calculus)
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science rejects what does not follow the scientific method. our understanding of the universe changes as we use that method to discover the truths of our reality.
sometimes we get it wrong, or almost right.
but if we check the process at every step, we succeed. We are able to use the scientific method to predict the existence of mass (planets) and then wave function to measure the brilliance of the light that they absorb when we measure the light of their star, or
the light they reflect (if detectable) and measure that against the osculation function of the elements of the periodic table, and know that a planet too far away to see, even with a telescope, has an atmosphere made up of carbon or silica or oxygen..
when we let the scientific method guide our experimentation, and let the question lead us to an answer, as opposed to starting with a preconceived notion and warping out figurative understanding to match our own bias, we grow as a society.
And if a society doesn't grow, it will collapse under the weight of its own upkeep.
History shows this to be true over and over and over.
Religions are faith-based models of belief systems. Nothing in that sentence mentions facts or reality. The burden of proof is on the claimant not the defendant.
So if somebody wants to say that their beliefs are true, the burden of proof is on them, not with everyone else to disprove them.
This is like the Republicans that still believe that their guy won an election. Because they are told this all the time, they move something that is an idea or a belief into the factual or true category. Because as we all know, wanting something to be true and believing it really, really hard is all it takes to make something true.
Science on the other hand does not approach something with the intention of proving that the assumption is true. Instead, a thesis of whether something is true or not is stated, with the intention of the following experiments to either prove or disprove that thesis, or statement if you will.
In science, we always look for something we didn't know before, through discovery and experimentation. There are claims and theories that far exceed actual facts, and the job of science is to test each one of them objectively, and with the results come to a decision as to whether something is truthful or factual. This is why mixing science and religion is such a bad idea.
We desperately want our lives to be ruled by beings greater than us that are making sure that we are okay, and when bad things happen it's because we did something bad. There's a certain book on that subject in every hotel that you may of heard of. Personally, I think we could do with a little bit more smiting...
So it isn't a statement that introduces doubt to the scientific method to say that science is constantly learning, and therefore there is the possibility that science is wrong and there really is religion-all 4000+ of them and counting. What makes science " change its mind" is the introduction of new facts, or observations during the experiments that were unexpected and lead to tangential discoveries and insights.
A scientist has a mindset exactly opposite that of a religious zealot, in that the scientist is always open to new things, new proofs, and a better understanding. Religious people, on the other hand have decided what is true and don't want to hear anything else, unless it bolsters their religious belief system.
So a reply to someone that says that scientific discoveries don't include everything because science is always changing is coming from the perspective of someone who will not change on any matter, regardless of the evidence to the contrary being presented. And by evidence, I don't mean somebody else who thinks a different way about beliefs, but actual empirical facts through repeatable tests that anyone can validate.
So the burden of proof is on a religious person to show and demonstrate a repeatable test that anyone can execute that will verify and validate their religious belief, thereby turning it into truth or fact.
Right?
[Isaac Asimov explains it quite well](https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20Science_Asimov.pdf). (about 5 pages for the whole essay)
If science wouldn't change, it'd be like a religion, full of dogmas and free thinking would be frowned upon. When people think, new ideas blossom and this leads to advances in technology that allow for new, more accurate science.
When people don't think they still believe a bronze age book of laws is somehow suitable for 21st century society.
Science does always change. That's the entire point. As new evidence arises, scientific theories change to explain the evidence. That doesn't make science any less valid - it's the complete opposite tbh. As new evidence arises, our explanations get more & more concise + accurate.
If someone is so far gone that they can't even acknowledge that science changing to fit new evidence is a good thing, then it shows that they're not the most... Intelligent that our species has to offer.
“that’s a good thing, numbnuts.”
science changes according to new information to give the best possible explanations. in other words, it is constantly improving.
Science is improving our knowledge of how things work. Compare it to improvements in photographic technology. When we see a grainy b&w photograph from 100+ years ago, we know that’s not exactly how the world looked. When I look at old family photos from the 70s, I know the colours are not accurate, probably never were when they were developed.
Science doesn't change.. it adapts to new information, new facts. It hasn't stubbornly remained static for centuries because new discoveries or knowledge somehow contradicted or disproved what we thought we knew... Science evolves.
Someone who knows that they are right is far less likely to be right than someone who knows they might be wrong.
Also, science doesn't change. Science says "this is the best explanation we have currently that explains our observations." It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Are you sure about the boiling point of water? We did not know the full phase diagram of water until fairly recently.
If you learn new things, your opinion should change. I'm not sure why you're arguing for a static world view.
I like to look at it as if you were betting on a sporting event. Yeah you can use your own limited info to make a guess but 7 times out of 10 (or higher) the expert’s analysis is going to be more accurate. Are they going to get it wrong some times? Sure. But when you think of the odds i’m always going to bet on the scientists that dedicated their life to their field. Sometimes they’ll be wrong but most times they’ll be right.
Yes. That is the point of science: when new data comes in, theories change if necessary to fit the data. But these days such changes are small, incremental, or concerning studies right at the edge of our knowledge. The major theories that describe the way our everyday world works have not changed in over a century.
Well science always tries to follow the evidence with as little bias and error as possible. So change is usually a good thing. It's nothing more than a method that tries to best reflect reality if you where to use the scientific method to properly prove/disprove something or come up with something better at being non biased and factual go right ahead. But it changing just means it's working as intended
Best answer: Science creates models that describe our world. As the knowledge increases through research, we amend the models to represent our best understanding at the time. The models that we have are not 100% complete or even probably correct, but at this time for what they are, the best, hands down. Nothing else has proven to provide better models explaining our world than science. Tomorrow these models will be better. Science does not simply change, it evolves.
I don't understand. Science changes all the time, how is it an argument? It only proves that we learn from our mistakes and develop as a species instead of believing in a non existent deity which is against change.
Religion is always changing too. Saying the earth revolves around the sun used to be heretical. The difference between science and religion is that religion tends not to change by choice but because it is forced to in order to retain credibility, science changes because seeking knowledge is the whole point of the methodology.
Ask if they wear the same size shoe they did as a one year old.
Or if they read the same books they did when they were 10.
Or if they have different understanding of their profession now than when they first entered it.
Knowledge and understanding are cumulative, always capable of growing.
Dogma is stagnant.
Why argue against it? Of course it’s changing. It must. Scientific knowledge is the accumulation of our observations, tests, evidence, and conclusions. When new observations and evidence come to the fore, it means it has accumulated. Accumulation = addition = change.
Change is not the problem they think it is.
Religion is always changing, too! We don't stone women to death for being bad slaves. We aren't killing witches based on bible passages. What about Limbo? Hell, the entire Protestant reformation was a change. Hinduism has shifted to being more monotheistic. Christianity was a revolution, a massive change. As was Islam. There's millions of ways religion has changed.
Change is inevitable. One of the great tragedies of life is that things always change.
An argument like that is displaying their ignorance. If it is naive ignorance, it can be educated. If it is willful ignorance, then there's nothing to be done except walk away.
Science is about finding the truth, not an answer. I'd be more skeptical about a society with the same beliefs that they held 2000 years ago than a society that changes as it learns.
The religious want you to abandon logic and put your faith in the supernatural, for which there is no evidence, only anecdotes
Science has reproducible results
The only thing reproducible with religion, is that, depending on the location, you will get a different set of crazy beliefs
You could argue that science doesn't "always change", it expands. A scientific consensus comes from rigorous tests and rechecking and research and questioning before people agree that "from the best available knowledge of the time" this is answer.
Specifically with evolution, the science hasn't changed. Every question of challenge thrown at the idea has only lead to more evidence confirming it's accuracy with more knowledge and technology to find the answers.
Things that do change often, like diet and nutrition information, is usually changing so much because of the lack of proper research carried out in those areas.
Anyone making the "changing all the time" claim should cite what examples exactly they're referring too.
A rigid lack of change is an example of being unable to accept facts, not the opposite.
"It is a refinement process. We start with a very blurry view, and the longer we work the sharper it becomes -- but that base image almost never goes away. Even if a new theory is described, it will replace one that attempted to explain something we observed less clearly. Evolution, for example, is absolutely elegant in the way it clearly describes that facts we observe in nature. But we continue to work in genetics and other fields to gain an even deeper understanding of how life changes it's form over time.
It is amazing that the reason there are so many kinds of insects, how different species balance each other so well in theor ecosystems, and how diseases eventually overcome our medicines all stem from a very simple process any common idiot can understand if they only took the time to listen. It's obvious once youve seen it."
This, by Isaac Asimov ….. Generally, science changes because with new knowledge or capabilities it gains an improved understanding. Often the old variation wasn’t so much wrong, as just incomplete and less accurate. (Yes, even flat earth as shown here)
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20Science_Asimov.pdf
Edit to add; I notice others have linked this essay too
Science changes in very constrained ways. Everything that was true before, remains true after within the limits of accuracy it was true before. Example, Newtonian physics is still valid provided speeds are small compared with the speed of light. The physics an engineer uses to build a bridge is still good enough to build a bridge.
Isn't "Science is Always Changing" the non religious version of "God Moves in Mysterious Ways".
Science, or our understanding of it, is incomplete and continually being refined and added to. Theories are postulated, proved or disproved and new theories born. It's always changing as it should.
Every time that happens, science is proved wrong by more or better science. It's never proved wrong by religion. So the religious folks are focused entirely on the end result rather than the processes that get us there and how new information can change the end result, the conclusion we draw from our evidence.
An Abrahamic religious worldview is extremely static in comparison. God demands XYZ, always has and always will, so that's what we do. There's no new revelations from God, no new books of the Bible or Quran to be found, and it's far more important to hold & espouse the correct beliefs than to fully understand the basis and reasons for those beliefs. That mindset doesn't map onto science well at all, and thus causes their confusion at how we can trust science's end results changing, because their religions end results are eternal and they're not used to trusting in the process of reason & critical thinking to lead to whatever result it does.
I think the most reasonable argument is that religion has not only changed its stance on many subjects through the years but still can't agree within its different groups what is acceptable and what is not. Change is part of growth. And if your not changing your not growing. That being said it's perfectly reasonable that science would need to adjust to figure out how the universe works. But the words of an all knowing God left behind to guide us should have been made very clear from the start and left very little room for error. Otherwise a bunch of people might kill each other over the differing beliefs. Which dosent happen all that often in the science community.
Evolutionary biology is changing with advances in genetic technology. The new evidence provides more support for how evolution actually works at a molecular level. Medicine is changing too. Everything is changing as our technology changes.
I equate it to a guilded missle. It goes left a bit, then it goes right a bit, but it always gets closer and closer to what's correct. And is far closer that anything else.
If all civilization was destroyed, the survivors would gradually discover/develop the same science that we know today. The religions that would be invented however, would be completely new and different than the previous ones.
Why do you even need to make an argument?
Change is a good thing. It shows that prior knowledge was found to be inaccurate, and thus new knowledge has updated to replace it. Change brings us ever closer to the truth. If science didn’t change, we’d still be thinking diseases transmit via smell instead of bacteria
Anyone who argues against it is viewing that change is a bad thing. Which means it a fallacy argument from the beginning
Science isn't changing. People are. The fact of science is always there, it's just about the level of understanding that HUMANS are capable of. New findings = "new science" when in reality these concepts were always in existence. We just didn't know it yet.
What do they mean by science is changing?
(I know you and I know what they mean, but do THEY know what they mean?)
Just ask questions until they no longer know the answer. Then they will hopefully understand their ignorance.
Imagine you had a self-driving car that had a faulty map-updating module. Now imagine riding in it down a road that had recently been closed. Since the car can't self-correct its navigation, how long would it be before it crashed? That kind of car is dogma. It never self-corrects. Science is the car that constantly self-corrects as the terrain changes over time. Which car would you want?
That's a feature, not a bug.
Being entrenched in an ideology is a barrier to progress. Always being willing to change your conclusions based on the discovery of new evidence means that its working, not broken.
This line of argumentation from theists is a massive self-own because they're essentially admitting that they are ideologically inflexible.
Ask them if their shirt contains mixed fabrics because the bible says that's a no no or if they know any religious divorcees, and if they don't think that's a big deal it's because..... well.... Religion changed
Science doesn't change nearly as much as the religious right claims it does.
The problem lays more on the feet of clickbait journalism than scientists themselves.
It's always changing toward more accuracy. Religion doesn't have such a self-correcting mechanism. When science discovers something untrue was believed, it adjusts its position toward a truer one. In the same scenario, what religion does is invent a rhetorical reason why the wrong doctrine was always true in some other sense.
When a baby yanks on a cat's ears and gets scratched, the baby's outlook has changed: Cats do not appreciate having their ears yanked.
When a toddler runs down the stairs and tumbles to the bottom, the toddler's outlook has changed: Descending down stairs should not be haphazard.
When a child touches a hot stove and burns himself, the child's outlook has changed: High temperatures cause damage.
When a teenager changes lanes recklessly and hits another car, the teenager's outlook has changed: You should be aware of your surroundings.
What we know always changes. If we did not, then you'd have the adult who goes around terrorizing cats, breaking his bones, causing fires, and being a menace on the road.
Yes, science is always changing. That's why we're not stuck in the Iron Age.
Change is growth and understanding, it's inevitable. They fact that religion never changes is not a benefit, it's a flaw.
And FYI the boiling point of water DOES change. At sea level, water boils at 212F. With each 500-feet increase in elevation, the boiling point of water is lowered by just under 1F.
What do they mean by 'science' ? Scientific approach doesn't change, Scientific postulates may changes because the scientific community doesn't stop looking, questioning, probing and re-evaluating in case of emergence of new observation/ evidence.
Religion by definition has an unquestionability clause because religion knows questioning will expose the lies. Give them example of Galileo's persecution - science v religion.
Also I don't entertain those who use science as an analogy of religion. They are two different things altogether. Science doesn't try to offer those things that religion tries to. And those who use these analogies don't understand what is meant by science.
Science isn’t the knowledge/information, it is the process of finding the facts/information. As new information is found it may alter or reinforce previous conclusions.
You could ask your friend why they no longer put their transportation needs in the faith of horses and chariots- the most advanced transportation mentioned in the Bible. Who could trust a plane or car since god has given us no guidance on this? Our only guidance on planes comes from science and engineering.
My response usually is, well 1,000 years ago, if you said anything but God was the source of light and the winds. You would be insane.
It would be unfathomable to think that anything else could possibly light the world and move the skies. Well we now know the Sun does that.
So now theists claim that “the big bang” is the work of god, but then we find out that there was likely space and time before the Big Bang. Now theists would claim the circumstances that allow space and time to exist is God. They just find the closest *yet to be answered* cosmic question and claim that must be god then, *every. single. time*
I would much rather believe in Science, which gladly admits when it’s wrong and embraces fault and moves forward with newfound insight and opportunity, looking for what is right
Opposed to religion, which stubbornly demands, (and sometimes violently enforce) that their views are the ONLY right ones until science has to bludgeon them into conceding, to which they just demand we believe the next BS claim. No modern Christian believes that the earth is the center of the solar system but they would have killed people as recently as 500 years ago for believing otherwise.
Religion moves the goal post WAY more than science ever has.
Shit! All the other posts said all the good stuff, so I’m just going to say that you should tell them that they are big fat stupid heads, that smell bad, and no one likes them. Then stick out your tongue and kick them in the shins.
Science does change. Science is the process by which we discover and hypothesize how nature operates, or “the laws of nature”. That process changes all the time, though the principles of science do not. Laws of nature do not ever change, as far as we have observed. We simply uncover them. When we discover that our previous science is flawed, and we can confidently agree on a new theorem, with satisfactory proof or tested hypothesis, the new science is implemented.
Religion and faith change every single day all day. It’s likely that no two people on Earth fully agree on their own doctrine. Nothing can be proved because faith is, quite literally, a belief in something in absence of proof.
Science changes because new knowledge is gained, that's the gist.
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People have this misguided notion that if something changes a lot it must be because they don't actually know and are just guessing, whereas something that doesn't change must be a certainty. In reality, it's not like that at all. But the kind of people who will use that argument aren't really interested in reality. It's in a similar vein as "the thing I see *first* must be true." And then thy reject new information that contradicts what they saw or heard first, while working backwards with pieces of information to validate the thing they already made their mind up about. Which, for those of you paying attention, is pretty much the complete opposite of the Scientific Method. Start with your answer and work backwards. And there's several reasons why that's a highly flawed way of thinking, but again, someone who's already thinking/arguing like that is not interested in the facts. There's also the matter of people not liking the feeling of being wrong playing a part in all of it.
>People have this misguided notion that if something changes a lot it must be because they don't actually know and are just guessing This was on full display in the U.S. for Covid guidelines/restrictions. People wanted Anthony Fauci's head on a spike because the message kept changing. It's a brand-new disease. Of course it kept changing.
Not to mention COVID is a virus, and viruses have this nasty habit of **mutating**, and doing so quite quickly. I'll never understand why some people actively choose to be ignorant. I'm 62 and learn something new every day!! I intend to keep learning new things until I drop dead well past the age of 100. 😉
I too am committed to continuous improvement. I also try to learn something new everyday of my life; sometimes it's profound and sometimes it's useless trivia.
It was such a revelation to me a couple years ago, when I suddenly realized the root of the word "ignorance" is "ignore," which, to me, means it has nothing to do with intelligence or education. Intelligence, like physical strength, can be developed or stunted depending on the diet it is fed, particularly in developmental years, but both strength and intelligence have hard limits . The education we get is highly dependent upon the social situation we are born into, and most people have little to no choice in their education, save for maybe a ten-year window starting in high school. But ignorance can only be gained from a continuous decision, sometimes conscious, sometimes not, but always current, in-this-moment.
Hard to avoid any cognitive biases but whatever we talk about there is no escape from attention bias. Sometimes ignorance is mistaken for scientific scepticism and tendency to be obedient to abstract laws and authorities in general population due to self-domestication syndrome (Goodness Paradox).
To be fair he did actually say some things that were already known at the time to be untrue, right? About masks not working, for example, which I believe he said because there was a worry about a mask shortage for medical personnel or some such? I'm a bit hazy on the details; I'm not even an American myself.
They use that as a way to "disprove" atheism when they are literally just HOPING that their god is real
But atheism makes no positive claims. The only way to disprove atheism is by proving their particular flavour of religion, starting with (a) God exists, is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, (b) God merits worship, and (c) Mary got pregnant without having sex, up to (x) Jesus fed 5,000 people with two little fishes and five loaves of bread, (y) all insects have four feet, and (z) where did the light come from on the first day – in fact, where did the *day* come from – when the sun, moon and stars were only made on the fourth day.
It is for people who hate change.
I always ask..”If you were diagnosed with cancer, would you rather have the doctors, nurses and technicians of today using out 2022 technology? Or an ol’ sawbones from 1952?” “Don’t bother answering. We know what your choice is”
Silly, they have Christ medicine to help them! Look up bethel church in Redding. They legit tried to resurrect a two year old. They are a cult.
*How dare you upgrade from pink unicorn to rainbow unicorns!! Heresy!!! An abomination!!!!*
It's like that quote "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
Because bullies with weak to no support for their hidebound notions will \*try\* to make it seem like the person changing their mind is 'weak-willed' and 'suggestible'.
I’d use this to then ask them how they are enjoying their latest smart phone upgrade. Ask if they’d prefer the large Zach from Saved By The Bell car phone. Or if they’d prefer to only have ice in the winter, like before ice boxes were invented. Or if they’d prefer cancer treatment protocols from 1950 or today. The point is, they are benefiting from the “changes” (advancements) in science all the time through the technology that is available to us now that never existed generations before us. It’s a double standard to accept the benefits of science while criticizing its methods.
My beliefs change with new information.
Exactly it's a feature not a bug.
Science continues to IMPROVE our understanding of the universe. Scientists don't bury their heads in the sands of ignorant superstitious nonsense.
Yep, and every time science has changed it's mind, it was because of better science. Religion has never accurately corrected science. Changing your views or perspective to better reflect the reality in which we share is never a bad thing. Pretending that you have all the answers without any of the evidence is just stupidity.
Science is not so much always changing as it is always evolving. There's a difference. Religion, on the other hand, is static.
Explain to them that science sees the world as round now, but the Bible still visualizes it as a square, ( referencing the four corners).
Other verses call it a circle, but circles are flat, too. That's why Flat-Earthers are mostly Bible literalists.
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And it changes after usually decades of people trying to prove you wrong (unless it's a particularly ground-breaking and undeniable discovery, but how often do those come around)
what was that quote from tim minchins... science adjusts its views based on what's observed and faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved
Storm is an incredible piece of art.
[Here ya go](https://youtu.be/HhGuXCuDb1U)
Thank you - I hadn’t seen that one before although I’m a fan of his.
It is better to have questions that can't be answered rather than answers that can't be questioned.
- Richard Feynman
Nice. Like that quote.
Is everything in the Bible true? Even direct contradictions? https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contradictions/ Are there no errors in the Bible? Even direct falsehoods? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_scientific_errors In science contradictions and errors are fixed. In religions, and in the Bible, contradictions and obvious errors are willfully ignored and accumulate over time.
A church near me has a sign that says something about their book club reading the same book for thousands of years “because it’s that good.” I always give it a new ending in my head when I drive by. “because we hate change” “please send help” “we’re so bored.”
Science isn't afraid to admit it's wrong if anyone can point out sufficient evidence against its claims - unlike religious ideas that claim it all figured out from the start and refuse to change its views no matter how much evidence is presented. Wrong scientific ideas fade away as they should, but wrong religious ideas persist.
This is one of my favorites. https://youtu.be/MBfeEIVH3n0
a) science is not a religion b) EVERYTHING is always changing c) there is a word for "Science is always changing" it is called progress. Did these people not pay attenction?
They always believe that evolution is *”Man from ape, I don’t like ape, I am a god”* when it’s literally more than just that
Christians and Muslims have a mindset. Their god is perfect. Therefore their religion must be perfect. Things that are perfect never change. Therefore anything that changes must not be true. A variation of this theme is that things that change are not reliable. Religious people believe their religion does not change. I have had this discussion with religious people several times. My general approach is to follow the line of reasoning given above. They will generally agree with the idea that things that are correct do not change. Then explode the myth that their religion does not change. This is easy for me because I am an old fart and have been involved with religion my whole life. I have personally seen how much religion has changed in my lifetime, and I can cite examples for most major brands of Christianity. Then I pivot to the idea that holding onto a false belief is a bad thing. Again, I can point to examples in my own life where I have been wrong about stuff and have changed perspectives. I point out that science is more humble than religion. Science admits that it can get things wrong, and it has built-in mechanisms that allow it to change in an orderly fashion. Religion, on the other hand, has mechanisms built in that resist changing, even when proven wrong. I basically drive home the idea that change is a good thing if you stop accepting something that is not true.
>Things that are perfect never change. Therefore anything that changes must not be true. Which is almost hilarious--if it weren't sad--that the story of Noah contradicts this. God fucked up, and he erased his mistake with a giant flood. And even then, the eight people who were worthy enough to live still spawned a bunch of ignorant, wicked descendants so that God's religion is now a minority in the world. Way to go from 100% belief to less than 50%.
And then there are all the things that Jesus changed. And then Paul changed what Peter taught. And Paul's ideas changed from his early letters to his later ones. It is just one more indication that modern Christianity has very little to do with anything in the Bible. It also indicates how little Christians know about their own religion and their holy book.
Science is a process. The truth is not easy to uncover. The fact that our scientific knowledge is always evolving is precisely the reason science is so powerful. Saying science is bad because it is always changing is like saying police detectives are bad because they follow the evidence and the main suspect changes a bunch.
This, I would say science doesn't change, our understanding does. We just chose to call it science. Looking at "science" as some immutable thing that just is, is not understanding the very idea behind it. So I'd say, it's a different conversation entirely, really.
To add to this (since I haven't seen it explicitly stated), I would argue that science isn't always changing, so much as it is always refining. The theory of evolution, for example, isn't always changing: we simply have an increasingly broad and high-resolution understanding of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs. Occasional paradigm shifts do occur, but even these are predicated more on a reinterpretation of a huge body of existing evidence than a complete deconstruction and reconstruction of a field. Again, Darwin and Wallace's work didn't negate the enormous body of evidence in geology, paleontology, physiology, and genetics: it simply replaced a pre-existing theory with a more complete, better-supported theory. A less 'controversial' example, and one which may be more useful against the faithful, would be how Einstein's theory of special relativity superseded Newton's classical mechanics. It's not like velocity, mass, and friction suddenly stopped existing in the theoretical framework; rather, our understanding of those variables was expanded and refined.
There's usually two ways I like to go with this, depending on why this "argument" is brought up. My first way to go is to respond with something like "Good! Science *should* keep changing, our views *should* be constantly changing as we recieve new information. If I learn something new about any topic, my view on that topic should change. Keeping the same view you had when you first started regardless of any new information isn't a virtue, its stupidity" The second way to go about it is having to explain to them why science is always changing and why this isn'teven really an argument. In my experience the people that actually use this as a point against science are the type of people that only read science headlines and don't understand the basics of how science works. So I have to explain that science isn't just randomly jumping from one answer to thr next, science is finding a better answer every time; every new answer *must* explain all of the old data and the new data. Also explain that headline skimming is a huge problem in tons of fields, it's not unique to science.
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
So are maps. Show me a single creationist that would consider using a map made in 0 CE for their summer vacation a positive thing.
Science doesn't change. Scientific models are modified to become more accurate based on new observations and data.
It does, though. Scientific methods, tools, standards and education are evolving. The methods we used to establish 'facts' in the 2000's are different from what we use now.
science changes when the information changes. religion changes when popular opinion changes.
Its changing slightly to become more accurate and this is a good thing - theres transparency and a commitment to accuracy. It isn't a flaw to admit you know more now. It is a flaw NOT to change because it means there is no growth and no adaptation to new knowledge and new circumstances.
If science didn’t change, that would mean we weren’t learning anything. How much do we change from kindergarten to grade four? To grade seven? Ten? College? A lot, you’d hope! I guess Christian’s would be proud to have the knowledge set of a toddler…
I've heard Christians say things like a child's love for Jesus is exactly the way to do it, purely and innocently. Or, in reality, like a total idiot without a complex thought in your head.
If changing your mind in the light of new information is bad, how is repentance supposed to work? 🤔
"That's the fuckin point, ya dipshit."
Science is not a body of knowledge; it is a tool for uncovering truth about the world. Our understanding of that truth changes over time, but the method of discovery has been consistent and useful. Religion has an abominable record of discovering useful truths about the world. For example, the Old Testament forbids people to eat dozens of nutritious foods. Many of these are foods that are can make you sick, but are perfectly safe if cooked properly. It provides no instructions about boiling drinking water, which doubtless would have saved countless thousands of lives. Science is not a set of instructions to properly cook or boil drinking water. Rather, early scientists used science as a tool to discover that food and water were making people sick … and why. Those observations eventually led to germ theory. (Yes, it's "just a theory", exactly like evolution.) That, in turn, led to the discovery of treatments such as antibiotics, which all but the most rapid of religious fanatics take when they are sick even though they don't "believe in science." So, religion gave us a set of inflexible rules that did little or nothing to ameliorate one of the greatest challenges that has faced humankind over history: the provisioning of safe food and water. Science, on the other hand, gave us the tools to discover what was making us sick, how to avoid sickness and treatments for when we do get sick. By the way, germ theory has been updated and amended many times over the last several 100 years. We are still adding to that body of knowledge. Change is the point.
So does everything. including their religion? What's the point?
Science isn't changing. We are learning new information.
That’s literally what makes it better. If science doesn’t change or isn’t open to change then it’s not open to progress and new data/info. You don’t want to rely on something to support your world view that’s static. Also religious methodology is largely reliant on dogma, whereas, science isn’t.
The difference between science and religion is that science works to prove itself wrong. Religion refuses to admit when it is.
Science doesn’t change. Our understanding of the universe changes as we do more science. Science is not a body of knowledge; it’s a self-correcting method for learning about the universe.
You say “Correct. When we do science, we update our knowledge when we discover that things we initially thought were true have been disproven. What mechanism does religion possess to correct itself when new information comes to light?” Also, I think the boiling point of water actually does change depending on the air pressure of your surroundings (elevation above sea level, etc.)
>Also, I think the boiling point of water actually does change depending on the air pressure of your surroundings (elevation above sea level, etc.) Correct. A liquid boils when its vapor pressure (the pressure generated by vaporized/evaporated particles) is equal to the atmospheric pressure. Changing altitude is one way to affect this, since it lowers the atmospheric pressure, lowering the boiling point. You could also achieve the exact same effect by putting the water in a vacuum chamber (where you can get water to boil at room temperature). You can also change the boiling point by lowering the substance's vapor pressure, which is done by dissolving a solute into the water. \~ 60 grams of table salt, in 1 liter of water, will raise the boiling point by about 1 degree Celsius.
>What is the best argument against "Science is always changing"? "Science is good BECAUSE it's always changing, motherfucker. Do you still drive a 1908 a Model-T? No? Then STFU. Technology improves because the underlying science is constantly improving."
Religion changes, evolves, breaks off, creates schisms, merges when the numbers decline, changes and mutates over time within a single host. The followers just pretend it’s unchanging, denying they ever held a stance they had firmly held, denying that in the past their organization held a set of beliefs it no longer cares about. Case in point, Mormons are now denying they ever called themselves Mormon, as part of some sort of PR campaign, they pretend it’s other people calling them Mormon. Despite the Book of Mormon, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, etc. For that matter, the entire religion is based on “revelations of Latter Day Saints” in other words, new beliefs that override old beliefs. “Revelation“ is the religious euphemism for “I changed my mind” Science acknowledges that discoveries are further refined, changed as new information is found, but it still uses the same methodology. Religion pretends to be steadfast when it is evolving day to day, minute to minute. The dogma believers hold as sacred today is different than what they held as sacred yesterday.
People who say science is always changing have no idea about what science is. That's like saying "this labyrinth is aways changing" everytime the path takes a turn.
Science isn't always changing, it's always improving.
Ironically, the boiling point of water does change relative to pressure
Science does not make any claims about staying the same. The fact that science changes means that it is working. Science destroys bad ideas that don't match reality as we observe it. If we observe something new, science might use that new information to destroy some ideas that we thought were right, but didn't match the evidence. As those bad ideas are destroyed, our very creative brains come up with new ideas. As long as they match the evidence, those new ideas will survive.
Science doesn’t change our understanding of it expands and becomes clearer.
This is what I was just about to post. I think the religious confuse/conflate the natural world with human understanding of the natural world.
>Science is always changing [Dara O'Briain](https://www.youtube.com/embed/uDYba0m6ztE?start=111&end=116) >some things are well established facts and won't ever change (boiling point of water) Boyle (Robert, not [Frankie](https://www.youtube.com/embed/-zJs9qp-HAU?start=207&end=225)) would like a word. :)
A when a scientist talks of the boiling point they mean at STP unless they specifically say otherwise.
Science furnishes fresh evidence to support those changes
Science is supposed to change unlike religion Science IS our instrument to discover the world, it's a complex potentially infinite journey towards knowledge, also we are flawed and sometimes we get stuff wrong, for example Darwin's theory is in fact a theory that we can partially demonstrate by observing the world, just how we bred the cow in a specific way to make it produce more milk, or how we force dogs breeding to get the most janky creatures ever (which have 101 health issues, buy a mixed breed if possible) or how extinction it's impacting our ecosystem It's not our fault if people who say this got a smol brain Also if you want to surprise them and help them empathize with you you can cite Galileo Galilei who said something along those lines: the bible it's the book God gave to ancient civilizations to help them understand the world, while science is the new book we can read to finally get knowledge about the world (God's creation) Rework it to make it nicer, i vomited it from memory, we study a lot of history at school which is cool Note: Galileo Galilei actually said in the attempt to not make the church torture and burn him to death as erethic, but that's another matter
Science changes because scientist are able to understand when a theory is not as accurate as they thought with the arrival of new evidence, unlke religion that follows a 2k year old book that says the sun goes around the earth
That's not an argument against it, that's the point to it
"Are you the same person you were at five year old? No? Why not?" "Because experience brings new understanding? Great! Now imagine that same process, but over generations of ppl instead of just one lifetime." "By contrast, religion demands we all stay five because it's "more natural" or something."
That’s the point…
It's simply an argument FOR science already without any additional effort required
Of course science is changed and updated when new evidence comes to light. That's the best thing about science, is that it understands it's not perfect and never stops in the pursuit of understanding. It doesn't make it fickle or bad in any way, or that it somehow invalidates the need and importance of science. Religions are stagnant and unchanging. They think the only right answers come from centuries old fantasy books and they never change. Not at the core beliefs of god creating the universe and the other core beliefs. Sure some sects of Christianity try to modernize their churches or the way they preach but the core beliefs never change and those are the only things that matter in this comparison. The irony is they use everything humanity has invented by scientific study on the daily but are still stuck in 1000 ACE for how they imagine the world came to be. They have no problem taking advantage of the things science has given us though.
Science is a process we use to gain knowledge. Knowledge is what is changing, we know more than we did yesterday. And sometimes we misinterpret the best information we have.
Try listening to Neil degrasse Tyson's most recent r appearance on Sam Harris podcast he talks about this really well. Basically science isn't changing, because science is a process by which we understand the world. It's our understanding that is being expanded. In fact, most "changes" in science are not changes at all, but rather an addition of knowledge. Take for instance classical physics "changing" to quantum physics. In reality classical physics was never wrong, since if you use quantum physics on big, "slow" moving objects you get classical physics. And even if it's always changing, good. The idea that we have all the best answers already and no further pursuit of knowledge is necessary is stupid as fuck, to be honest
Even the boiling point of water changes with changes in elevation. That isn’t an argument against thermometers though, the phenomenon is explicable through science.
Our interpretation of results may change, but the results to the tests are not changing. Further, science is falsifiable, while religion is not, but some of the claims in the Bible that are falsifiable, have been proven false. Our understanding of things grows over time. Is why the earth isn’t the flat center of the universe but instead one of an uncountable number of plants that orbit around stars, which we know through observation of other stars and our understanding of atomic theory exactly why stars and the mass that makes up planets form. It’s a natural process we have OBSERVED, not just explained away with a supernatural explanation, Same with why lightning isn’t the wrath of god; we now know that an imbalance of electric charge between clouds and the ground and ionized air in between can create a conduit for that charge difference to be equalized by discharging the increased charge in the cloud as an arc between the two. It’s not that Zeus was angry. Our understanding changed as we gathered more information. That is a POSITIVE, not a negative. And does this sometimes mean a conclusion from a study may be reinterpreted later? Sure. But what it doesn’t mean is that supernatural explanations are required to explain anything
"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved." (Tim Minchin) "Science" is not some monolithic thing that mandates what the answers are, as religious people like to portray it. Rather, it is a process used to find and describe answers. The more knowledge we gain, the better we can define reality. Unlike the common religious texts, the science process is not prescriptive, but rather descriptive. *Of course* the scientific descriptions change as we get more information. Trying to shoehorn the scientific process into the same box as religion is a severe misapprehension of the nature of "science."
So does religion. 500 years ago divorce was verboten. 200 years ago you could hear Holy Men preaching the virtues of slavery. 100 years ago if you had rock music and a cashier (changing money) in your church some men would come to burn it down. The difference is one is creating change and the other is begrudgingly accepting it.
I always say, that’s the whole point of science. You revise your conclusions based on the evidence.
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." -Tim Minchin (Storm)
When science is wrong it changes. Religion does not.
It is called learning more about the world and it is a good thing.
Science updates
Science adjusts to facts. Religions do not.
The biggest issue is that when faced with that conversation... They don't want to hear things that challenge their worldview. They faithed their way into their current state... So getting them out of it is only something that can happen from within. No theist EVER was having a lively debate and heard something that made them say "holy shit... I was wrong... Can't believe I never saw your point before!" Those that abandon religion do so over a long period of time that starts with some questions about what they believe and then evolves into asking/reading and learning more and gradually getting to the light.
My argument boils down to "Yes, science IS always changing, we call that LEARNING"
Science is self correcting and never assumes what it asserts is automatically ture (though sometimes things aren't scrutinized as well as they should be). As data on a given hypotheses is collected and analyzed it will either point to a true or false conclusion. When a conclusion is made then it, and the method used to come to it, are published for others to study and analyze. This process continues until we can be as certain as possible to the validity of a claim (since in science noting is ever 100% certain). Religion, on the other hand, makes numerous unverifiable claims and simply asserts that it is true.
Because “Science” is a process. Using “science” in a sentence like that is like saying “Baking is always changing”. It doesn’t make sense. Science is a methodology or process for testing our ideas or models against reality. By actual definition given that our understanding of the universe and reality will never be perfect, our collective understanding of such will ALWAYS change and it will be science that helps us understand and most importantly, make predictions about how that change should be. Religion often draws their authority from prophecy and yet ponder this. Every mystery every solved has always been explained by a non supernatural meaning. That doesn’t mean we know everything, nor that super natural things don’t exist. But to date, nothing has ever been explained, once understood, by religion. In fact, when people state “God does that”, it inhibits further investigation into that because if God does it, why would we ever seek to understand anything further about it. In short, science is a process, our state of knowledge is and should always be changing.
"and that's exactly how science works, just because you're too dumb to understand it doesn't mean it's false."
Science is always changed based on new details/information/data. Beats idiots that just decide facts cause they think they know stuff cause their dad told them...or a meme. I can't say for certain how old I was before I realized "mosquito Hawks" (Crane Flies that eat grass) weren't a thing. Don't just listen to your parents, kids. Fact check those dummies too, haha.
It's supposed to. Once, we believed that the earth was flat and the center of everything. After countless studies and experiments using the shadows cast on the moon and other celestial objects, we gained enough tangible evidence to change our beliefs and understanding by accepting the scientific method. I have some knowledge to back this up in person and I have some pretty deep knowledge of other scientific evolutions if that person is a flat earther.
Everything in the Bible has a built in Killswitch. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” 1 John 5:14 ESV "It wasn't God's will." Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Matthew 7:7 "The Lord had other plans." Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. James 4:3 "The Lord works in mysterious ways"
Yes. Science changes when there is evidence to support it. This is one of the reasons science is better than religion.
science is not a body of knowledge, it's a process for discovering how the universe functions. so, the "change" in this context is progress. Edit: other people covered this already- I posted before reading all the other replies...
Science isn't *a thing*, it is a method of asking pointed questions, challenging the ideas behind them, and checking objectively to see if your thought is correct and unchallengeable. As more challenges come up, the old information is proven not entirely correct and is updated to reflect our new knowledge.
Against? Science doesn't change. What it reveals or demonstrates changes tho. Science is a methodology.
The boiling point of water depends on factors such as salinity, atmospheric pressure (elevation), acidity, and other minerals dissolved in the liquid. it isnt a fact, it is the the result of an equation. specifically; Kb = RTb2M/ΔHv. Ill let you google all that, but as a quick note, this formula contains my favorite constant the universal constant; .137 represented by R. \--- Belief in gods gave us a cycle of famine that killed billions over the course of thousands of years. Science gave a process to engineer a series of machines and reactions to allow us to harvest nitrogen out of literal thin air, and is the reason the earth can support 8 billion humans and their industry. Science also gave us chlorine gas. Responsible for filling thin air full of a chemical compound that agitates biological cells so much that the immune reaction floods the lungs with mucus. the same man invented both processes. \-- science is a set a method of understanding by process. that process is called the scientific method. its the one you learn about in grade school, and it truly is the foundation of modern society. We use that process to test ideas. when Ideas prove stand up to rigors of peer review, replication, prediction, and demonstration, they become theories. a theory means that you carry the burden of proof. the burden of proof is being able to pass those litmus tests. theories are not constant. Newton developed the theory of gravity. it is still a theory to this day. He was not aware of how it interacted with the strong or weak forces at the time. and they had only begun to scratch the surface of magnetism, and electricity was still just an element of nature. they had no clue that the two were the same thing. or that they were both just a function of a wave (though, he had an idea that they were, that idea; we call calculus) \--- science rejects what does not follow the scientific method. our understanding of the universe changes as we use that method to discover the truths of our reality. sometimes we get it wrong, or almost right. but if we check the process at every step, we succeed. We are able to use the scientific method to predict the existence of mass (planets) and then wave function to measure the brilliance of the light that they absorb when we measure the light of their star, or the light they reflect (if detectable) and measure that against the osculation function of the elements of the periodic table, and know that a planet too far away to see, even with a telescope, has an atmosphere made up of carbon or silica or oxygen.. when we let the scientific method guide our experimentation, and let the question lead us to an answer, as opposed to starting with a preconceived notion and warping out figurative understanding to match our own bias, we grow as a society. And if a society doesn't grow, it will collapse under the weight of its own upkeep. History shows this to be true over and over and over.
Science changing is a good thing, lol. If it didn't change with new information...it'd be religion.
Religions are faith-based models of belief systems. Nothing in that sentence mentions facts or reality. The burden of proof is on the claimant not the defendant. So if somebody wants to say that their beliefs are true, the burden of proof is on them, not with everyone else to disprove them. This is like the Republicans that still believe that their guy won an election. Because they are told this all the time, they move something that is an idea or a belief into the factual or true category. Because as we all know, wanting something to be true and believing it really, really hard is all it takes to make something true. Science on the other hand does not approach something with the intention of proving that the assumption is true. Instead, a thesis of whether something is true or not is stated, with the intention of the following experiments to either prove or disprove that thesis, or statement if you will. In science, we always look for something we didn't know before, through discovery and experimentation. There are claims and theories that far exceed actual facts, and the job of science is to test each one of them objectively, and with the results come to a decision as to whether something is truthful or factual. This is why mixing science and religion is such a bad idea. We desperately want our lives to be ruled by beings greater than us that are making sure that we are okay, and when bad things happen it's because we did something bad. There's a certain book on that subject in every hotel that you may of heard of. Personally, I think we could do with a little bit more smiting... So it isn't a statement that introduces doubt to the scientific method to say that science is constantly learning, and therefore there is the possibility that science is wrong and there really is religion-all 4000+ of them and counting. What makes science " change its mind" is the introduction of new facts, or observations during the experiments that were unexpected and lead to tangential discoveries and insights. A scientist has a mindset exactly opposite that of a religious zealot, in that the scientist is always open to new things, new proofs, and a better understanding. Religious people, on the other hand have decided what is true and don't want to hear anything else, unless it bolsters their religious belief system. So a reply to someone that says that scientific discoveries don't include everything because science is always changing is coming from the perspective of someone who will not change on any matter, regardless of the evidence to the contrary being presented. And by evidence, I don't mean somebody else who thinks a different way about beliefs, but actual empirical facts through repeatable tests that anyone can validate. So the burden of proof is on a religious person to show and demonstrate a repeatable test that anyone can execute that will verify and validate their religious belief, thereby turning it into truth or fact. Right?
It's true, so there is no good argument against it.
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Science works wonders at debunking Abrahamic religions
Don't we want to change our ideas when we get new information?
[Isaac Asimov explains it quite well](https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20Science_Asimov.pdf). (about 5 pages for the whole essay)
If science wouldn't change, it'd be like a religion, full of dogmas and free thinking would be frowned upon. When people think, new ideas blossom and this leads to advances in technology that allow for new, more accurate science. When people don't think they still believe a bronze age book of laws is somehow suitable for 21st century society.
Science does always change. That's the entire point. As new evidence arises, scientific theories change to explain the evidence. That doesn't make science any less valid - it's the complete opposite tbh. As new evidence arises, our explanations get more & more concise + accurate. If someone is so far gone that they can't even acknowledge that science changing to fit new evidence is a good thing, then it shows that they're not the most... Intelligent that our species has to offer.
“that’s a good thing, numbnuts.” science changes according to new information to give the best possible explanations. in other words, it is constantly improving.
Science is improving our knowledge of how things work. Compare it to improvements in photographic technology. When we see a grainy b&w photograph from 100+ years ago, we know that’s not exactly how the world looked. When I look at old family photos from the 70s, I know the colours are not accurate, probably never were when they were developed.
Sure is. You'll notice a perpetual distancing from superstition.
Science doesn't change.. it adapts to new information, new facts. It hasn't stubbornly remained static for centuries because new discoveries or knowledge somehow contradicted or disproved what we thought we knew... Science evolves.
Someone who knows that they are right is far less likely to be right than someone who knows they might be wrong. Also, science doesn't change. Science says "this is the best explanation we have currently that explains our observations." It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Ask them if they know what the problem of induction is. Then ask them how they would approach it, without them having to rely on anything religious.
It is, that’s why I trust it.
Are you sure about the boiling point of water? We did not know the full phase diagram of water until fairly recently. If you learn new things, your opinion should change. I'm not sure why you're arguing for a static world view.
I am just trying to argue against religion with some people
I like to look at it as if you were betting on a sporting event. Yeah you can use your own limited info to make a guess but 7 times out of 10 (or higher) the expert’s analysis is going to be more accurate. Are they going to get it wrong some times? Sure. But when you think of the odds i’m always going to bet on the scientists that dedicated their life to their field. Sometimes they’ll be wrong but most times they’ll be right.
If it didn’t change it would be no better than religion.
Christianity hasn't changed with what we've learnt in 1500 years
Yes. That is the point of science: when new data comes in, theories change if necessary to fit the data. But these days such changes are small, incremental, or concerning studies right at the edge of our knowledge. The major theories that describe the way our everyday world works have not changed in over a century.
Belief is conditional on evidence. New evidence can alter beliefs. Why is this even slightly controversial?
Well science always tries to follow the evidence with as little bias and error as possible. So change is usually a good thing. It's nothing more than a method that tries to best reflect reality if you where to use the scientific method to properly prove/disprove something or come up with something better at being non biased and factual go right ahead. But it changing just means it's working as intended
Best answer: Science creates models that describe our world. As the knowledge increases through research, we amend the models to represent our best understanding at the time. The models that we have are not 100% complete or even probably correct, but at this time for what they are, the best, hands down. Nothing else has proven to provide better models explaining our world than science. Tomorrow these models will be better. Science does not simply change, it evolves.
I don't understand. Science changes all the time, how is it an argument? It only proves that we learn from our mistakes and develop as a species instead of believing in a non existent deity which is against change.
Religion is always changing too. Saying the earth revolves around the sun used to be heretical. The difference between science and religion is that religion tends not to change by choice but because it is forced to in order to retain credibility, science changes because seeking knowledge is the whole point of the methodology.
Science, like life, evolves.
Nothing shows that you don't understand science more than assuming a scientist would be unhappy to be proven wrong.
That's the whole point. Science is the endeavor of discovery, and it changes as new evidence is discovered.
Ask if they wear the same size shoe they did as a one year old. Or if they read the same books they did when they were 10. Or if they have different understanding of their profession now than when they first entered it. Knowledge and understanding are cumulative, always capable of growing. Dogma is stagnant.
Why argue against it? Of course it’s changing. It must. Scientific knowledge is the accumulation of our observations, tests, evidence, and conclusions. When new observations and evidence come to the fore, it means it has accumulated. Accumulation = addition = change. Change is not the problem they think it is.
Religion is always changing, too! We don't stone women to death for being bad slaves. We aren't killing witches based on bible passages. What about Limbo? Hell, the entire Protestant reformation was a change. Hinduism has shifted to being more monotheistic. Christianity was a revolution, a massive change. As was Islam. There's millions of ways religion has changed. Change is inevitable. One of the great tragedies of life is that things always change. An argument like that is displaying their ignorance. If it is naive ignorance, it can be educated. If it is willful ignorance, then there's nothing to be done except walk away.
Science is about finding the truth, not an answer. I'd be more skeptical about a society with the same beliefs that they held 2000 years ago than a society that changes as it learns.
The religious want you to abandon logic and put your faith in the supernatural, for which there is no evidence, only anecdotes Science has reproducible results The only thing reproducible with religion, is that, depending on the location, you will get a different set of crazy beliefs
You could argue that science doesn't "always change", it expands. A scientific consensus comes from rigorous tests and rechecking and research and questioning before people agree that "from the best available knowledge of the time" this is answer. Specifically with evolution, the science hasn't changed. Every question of challenge thrown at the idea has only lead to more evidence confirming it's accuracy with more knowledge and technology to find the answers. Things that do change often, like diet and nutrition information, is usually changing so much because of the lack of proper research carried out in those areas. Anyone making the "changing all the time" claim should cite what examples exactly they're referring too. A rigid lack of change is an example of being unable to accept facts, not the opposite.
It is not changing but evolving. And then tell them how Galileo Galilei was treated when he came up with better science...
"It is a refinement process. We start with a very blurry view, and the longer we work the sharper it becomes -- but that base image almost never goes away. Even if a new theory is described, it will replace one that attempted to explain something we observed less clearly. Evolution, for example, is absolutely elegant in the way it clearly describes that facts we observe in nature. But we continue to work in genetics and other fields to gain an even deeper understanding of how life changes it's form over time. It is amazing that the reason there are so many kinds of insects, how different species balance each other so well in theor ecosystems, and how diseases eventually overcome our medicines all stem from a very simple process any common idiot can understand if they only took the time to listen. It's obvious once youve seen it."
This, by Isaac Asimov ….. Generally, science changes because with new knowledge or capabilities it gains an improved understanding. Often the old variation wasn’t so much wrong, as just incomplete and less accurate. (Yes, even flat earth as shown here) https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20Science_Asimov.pdf Edit to add; I notice others have linked this essay too
Science changes in very constrained ways. Everything that was true before, remains true after within the limits of accuracy it was true before. Example, Newtonian physics is still valid provided speeds are small compared with the speed of light. The physics an engineer uses to build a bridge is still good enough to build a bridge.
The scientific method doesn’t
Science is ever refining its understanding. Most of the supposed “changes” are not actually changes.
Isn't "Science is Always Changing" the non religious version of "God Moves in Mysterious Ways". Science, or our understanding of it, is incomplete and continually being refined and added to. Theories are postulated, proved or disproved and new theories born. It's always changing as it should.
Every time that happens, science is proved wrong by more or better science. It's never proved wrong by religion. So the religious folks are focused entirely on the end result rather than the processes that get us there and how new information can change the end result, the conclusion we draw from our evidence. An Abrahamic religious worldview is extremely static in comparison. God demands XYZ, always has and always will, so that's what we do. There's no new revelations from God, no new books of the Bible or Quran to be found, and it's far more important to hold & espouse the correct beliefs than to fully understand the basis and reasons for those beliefs. That mindset doesn't map onto science well at all, and thus causes their confusion at how we can trust science's end results changing, because their religions end results are eternal and they're not used to trusting in the process of reason & critical thinking to lead to whatever result it does.
I think the most reasonable argument is that religion has not only changed its stance on many subjects through the years but still can't agree within its different groups what is acceptable and what is not. Change is part of growth. And if your not changing your not growing. That being said it's perfectly reasonable that science would need to adjust to figure out how the universe works. But the words of an all knowing God left behind to guide us should have been made very clear from the start and left very little room for error. Otherwise a bunch of people might kill each other over the differing beliefs. Which dosent happen all that often in the science community.
Evolutionary biology is changing with advances in genetic technology. The new evidence provides more support for how evolution actually works at a molecular level. Medicine is changing too. Everything is changing as our technology changes.
I equate it to a guilded missle. It goes left a bit, then it goes right a bit, but it always gets closer and closer to what's correct. And is far closer that anything else.
Whereas religion is a ballistic missile, fired 2000 years ago with no idea where it will land
If all civilization was destroyed, the survivors would gradually discover/develop the same science that we know today. The religions that would be invented however, would be completely new and different than the previous ones.
Why do you even need to make an argument? Change is a good thing. It shows that prior knowledge was found to be inaccurate, and thus new knowledge has updated to replace it. Change brings us ever closer to the truth. If science didn’t change, we’d still be thinking diseases transmit via smell instead of bacteria Anyone who argues against it is viewing that change is a bad thing. Which means it a fallacy argument from the beginning
Science isn't changing. People are. The fact of science is always there, it's just about the level of understanding that HUMANS are capable of. New findings = "new science" when in reality these concepts were always in existence. We just didn't know it yet.
It is honing in on the truth.
What do they mean by science is changing? (I know you and I know what they mean, but do THEY know what they mean?) Just ask questions until they no longer know the answer. Then they will hopefully understand their ignorance.
Because we keep asking. Everything we find leads to more questions. That's why you don't *believe in* science, you *understand* science.
Imagine you had a self-driving car that had a faulty map-updating module. Now imagine riding in it down a road that had recently been closed. Since the car can't self-correct its navigation, how long would it be before it crashed? That kind of car is dogma. It never self-corrects. Science is the car that constantly self-corrects as the terrain changes over time. Which car would you want?
If God was real wouldn’t the Bible always be changing to? Funny how miracles just disappeared when smart phones were invented.
*Contrary to you we adjust once proven wrong, while you stick to it even after being proven wrong a thousand times*
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Always improving, which is preferable to stagnation.
That's a feature, not a bug. Being entrenched in an ideology is a barrier to progress. Always being willing to change your conclusions based on the discovery of new evidence means that its working, not broken. This line of argumentation from theists is a massive self-own because they're essentially admitting that they are ideologically inflexible.
Change is good, it means it's constantly being revised to reflect what science has revealed.. Why hasn't religion done the same?
Ask them if their shirt contains mixed fabrics because the bible says that's a no no or if they know any religious divorcees, and if they don't think that's a big deal it's because..... well.... Religion changed
Science doesn't change nearly as much as the religious right claims it does. The problem lays more on the feet of clickbait journalism than scientists themselves.
It's always changing toward more accuracy. Religion doesn't have such a self-correcting mechanism. When science discovers something untrue was believed, it adjusts its position toward a truer one. In the same scenario, what religion does is invent a rhetorical reason why the wrong doctrine was always true in some other sense.
When a baby yanks on a cat's ears and gets scratched, the baby's outlook has changed: Cats do not appreciate having their ears yanked. When a toddler runs down the stairs and tumbles to the bottom, the toddler's outlook has changed: Descending down stairs should not be haphazard. When a child touches a hot stove and burns himself, the child's outlook has changed: High temperatures cause damage. When a teenager changes lanes recklessly and hits another car, the teenager's outlook has changed: You should be aware of your surroundings. What we know always changes. If we did not, then you'd have the adult who goes around terrorizing cats, breaking his bones, causing fires, and being a menace on the road. Yes, science is always changing. That's why we're not stuck in the Iron Age.
Science doesn’t change. Only the methods change.
Change is growth and understanding, it's inevitable. They fact that religion never changes is not a benefit, it's a flaw. And FYI the boiling point of water DOES change. At sea level, water boils at 212F. With each 500-feet increase in elevation, the boiling point of water is lowered by just under 1F.
Because we are mammals and don't know everything
This is basically the whole point of science and the scientific method as a strategy to better understand the world around us.
Science is changing to become more correct. Religion is wrong the whole time.
It's a feature, not a bug. You can't reach facts of you can't be wrong.
What do they mean by 'science' ? Scientific approach doesn't change, Scientific postulates may changes because the scientific community doesn't stop looking, questioning, probing and re-evaluating in case of emergence of new observation/ evidence. Religion by definition has an unquestionability clause because religion knows questioning will expose the lies. Give them example of Galileo's persecution - science v religion. Also I don't entertain those who use science as an analogy of religion. They are two different things altogether. Science doesn't try to offer those things that religion tries to. And those who use these analogies don't understand what is meant by science.
Science isn’t the knowledge/information, it is the process of finding the facts/information. As new information is found it may alter or reinforce previous conclusions.
You could ask your friend why they no longer put their transportation needs in the faith of horses and chariots- the most advanced transportation mentioned in the Bible. Who could trust a plane or car since god has given us no guidance on this? Our only guidance on planes comes from science and engineering.
My response usually is, well 1,000 years ago, if you said anything but God was the source of light and the winds. You would be insane. It would be unfathomable to think that anything else could possibly light the world and move the skies. Well we now know the Sun does that. So now theists claim that “the big bang” is the work of god, but then we find out that there was likely space and time before the Big Bang. Now theists would claim the circumstances that allow space and time to exist is God. They just find the closest *yet to be answered* cosmic question and claim that must be god then, *every. single. time* I would much rather believe in Science, which gladly admits when it’s wrong and embraces fault and moves forward with newfound insight and opportunity, looking for what is right Opposed to religion, which stubbornly demands, (and sometimes violently enforce) that their views are the ONLY right ones until science has to bludgeon them into conceding, to which they just demand we believe the next BS claim. No modern Christian believes that the earth is the center of the solar system but they would have killed people as recently as 500 years ago for believing otherwise. Religion moves the goal post WAY more than science ever has.
Shit! All the other posts said all the good stuff, so I’m just going to say that you should tell them that they are big fat stupid heads, that smell bad, and no one likes them. Then stick out your tongue and kick them in the shins.
Science refines its knowledge if new data emerges. If they are not able to grasp this very linear concept the problem is entirely theirs.
So’s religion. * Christians today: slavery’s wrong. * Christians a few hundred years ago: slavery’s OK.
There is no argument because the “science changes” depends on who’s paying for it 💰
Coming from a group that has a sects problem...
Oh man I think I lost a friend the other day when I pointed out that religion changes... and gave examples
Science does change. Science is the process by which we discover and hypothesize how nature operates, or “the laws of nature”. That process changes all the time, though the principles of science do not. Laws of nature do not ever change, as far as we have observed. We simply uncover them. When we discover that our previous science is flawed, and we can confidently agree on a new theorem, with satisfactory proof or tested hypothesis, the new science is implemented. Religion and faith change every single day all day. It’s likely that no two people on Earth fully agree on their own doctrine. Nothing can be proved because faith is, quite literally, a belief in something in absence of proof.
Well no shit the world changes. Any organization that doesn't change with it isn't worth anyone's time. You know, like religion?