Science Works!

Here’s deal. Science works, period. That car you drive, TV you watch, airplane you take trips in, and aspirin you take to get rid of a headache are all practical demonstrations of the fact that the scientific method works. That is an indisputable fact.

Here’s the scientific method in a nutshell.

1. Come up with a theory to explain the things that have been observed.
2. If there are two theories that both explain the observations, then adopt the simpler theory.
3. Come up with predictions based on the theory.
4. Devise experiments to observe more things in the attempt to confirm the predictions.
5. If the observed results agree with the predictions the theory stands.
6. When the observed results no longer agree with the predictions, go to step 1 and repeat the process.

It’s really important to understand that science is not about belief. It doesn’t matter if you believe there is no such thing as gravity, a ball will still fall to the ground when you throw it up in the air and it will do it predictably according to the formula v=gt.

There are two other assumptions in science. First, any experiment that one scientist does to test a hypothesis must be reproducible by other scientists. They must be able to confirm the observations. If one scientist says he threw a ball up and it didn’t come down, then another scientist must be able to repeat that and also have the ball not come down. Second, the way the universe works hasn’t changed over time. If a ball dropped on the earth today obeys the laws and formulas for gravity it would have done the same thing a billion years ago.

Science is distinguished from belief

Science cannot answer questions for which no experiment can be devised to create observable results. Of course, the most spectacular example of this is the question, “Is there a God?” There is simply no way anyone can think of today to devise a way to experimentally observe if there is a God or not. Some scientists say that the theories of physics that predict the big bang mitigate against the need for a God, to which the religious community counters by asking who or what created the laws that allowed for the big bang. There’s just no way to test the hypothesis that there is or isn’t a god. So that becomes a matter of belief.

The Presidential litmus test

Now we come to some of the current crop of Presidential candidates… Rick Perry and Michelle Backmann among them. They believe that the theory of Creationism is an alternative explanation to Evolution and that human-caused Global Warming is a matter of debate. Frankly, that is a bunch of malarkey. Creationism simply does not explain the observed facts. It relies on the notion that the laws of chemistry and physics were changed by God somewhere along the line. If you accept that line of reasoning then you can also say that God created the entire universe 5 seconds ago, including the apparent historical records and your memories and there is no way to disprove it. That becomes a matter of belief and not science.  There is no debate in the scientific community that evolution is the best explanation we have for the observed facts.

Same with global warming. The scientific community is united that man-caused global warming is the best way to describe the observed facts like the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the rise in temperature and melting of the glaciers on the planet. There is no real debate about this in the legitimate scientific community.

The wonderful thing about the human brain is that it can create entire fantasy worlds to entertain itself… like the movie Avatar… and the strange thing about the human brain is that it can lose the ability to distinguish reality from the fantasy worlds it creates. In other words, it loses the ability to distinguish factual reality from made-up facts and creates a fantasy world that explains the fantasy facts. Both Creationism and negating global warming are based on fantasy facts and not observed scientific reality.

So, the thing you have to ask yourself is whether any person who lives in the Creationist or anti global realty fantasy reality is qualified intellectually to be president. They are ignorant and you’ve got to wonder if there ignorance of basic facts is a basic way the operate mentally. In Michelle Bachmann’s case, the answer seems to be a resounding yes because of all the mistakes of basic facts she makes over and over again. To her, the facts don’t really matter as long as she makes a political point.

So, the litmus test for any Presidential candidate must be if they believe that Creationism is really valid or that there is no global warming. If they do believe that, they are not qualified to run this country.

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