Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per...
by Verdex on Friday December 18, 2015 @06:40PM
(#10761769)
No, I understood your point the first time. I'm saying that there's no empirical evidence that "scientific skepticism" is necessary or even useful for increasing the whole of human knowledge. If I accept your point without evidence, then by your own words I'm being anti-scientific.
Everything I've seen of Galileo leads me to believe that he was't a scientific skeptic (the dude still had epicycles when all he had to do was pay a bit more attention to Kepler). I'm interested in what evidence you use to believe that he was practicing any form of skepticism.
I also failed to differentiate "belief" from its use in common vernacular, so I'll rephrase my previous statement:
A scientist practices scientific skepticism. Accepting an unsubstantiated hypothesis without empirical evidence is contrary to scientific skepticism. Belief in a higher power is accepting an unsubstantiated hypothesis without empirical evidence. Thus, belief in a higher power is contrary to scientific skepticism. Therefore, belief in a higher power is contrary to being a scientist.
Of course it's human nature to become emotionally attached to a hypothesis of one's own design. And perhaps scientists would not so rigorously pursue empirical evidence to support their claims if they didn't "believe" them. But the difference between a scientist and a theist is that a scientist will back off their hypothesis when evidence to the contrary is presented, whereas a theist will not.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism