[druddha]

Being brilliant doesn't necessarily make you a good scientist.

Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist. Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical. Thus, believing in god or Elvis are anti-scientific beliefs.

[engi_nerd]

You make good points. Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist.

But people are remarkably good at erecting fences in their minds. Many of those brilliant people I refer to (I call them brilliant because of their past good work in science) were able to sort of build a fence in their mind around their work and let irrational beliefs take root around it. So they were not true scientists in all aspects of their lives.

Believing in God doesn't necessarily make you a bad scientist, either.

[druddha]

Agreed all around.

[Verdex]

I'm not trying to be facetious, but:

   Skepticism is a core quality of being a scientist.

Is something I'm skeptical about (if we all end up learning something here, I'll definitely appreciate the irony ... also I'm happier with your "a core" than I would be if you had said "the core").

Anyway, I just got done reading [1] and found it interesting that Galileo's biggest advantages as a scientist were that he could grind a lens and being trained as an artist (so he had a good idea what he was looking at when he looked at the moon). [And probably also being really witty so he could make friends at parties and impress his financial backers.]

Also:

    Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical.

This is something I would love a proof for (being a little bit facetious this time, but a proof for this would actually be really useful for some of my purposes).

I took several history of science and technology courses at university and the impression I got was that the most important aspects of being a scientist was messing around with technology, taking notes, and having a lot of time to sit around and think. [Having some sort of rival who was also doing teh science whom you really wanted to show up seems to be a bonus.]

Being willing to be disappointed when you're proved wrong seems a lot more useful than only believing things you have proof for. In fact believing something without proof seems like a great way to get started on something very important as long as you're willing to do a lot of additional work.

[1] - http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

[druddha]

I apologize for not being more clear. I'm speaking specifically of scientific skepticism [1]. Without practicing scientific skepticism, Galileo would not have been motivated to grind lenses in the first place.

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

[Verdex]

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.

[xupybd]

I'm pretty sure there is overwhelming evidence that Elvis did exist.

Edit (you edited the post, now my joke makes no sense :( )

[druddha]

No I didn't! The joke is valid. You must have been reading the King James version of my comment.

[shanemhansen]

Newton would like to have a word with you about turning stuff into gold via the power of alchemy.

[stefantalpalaru]

> Believing in something without proof is contrary to being skeptical.

You underestimate the number of scientists with absurd beliefs.

There are people who believe in parallel universes, dark matter, spooky action at a distance, wormholes, time travel, simulating the human brain in silico, more than 3 spatial dimensions, strong artificial intelligence, aliens, etc.

Dealing with the absurd is a fundamental part of the human experience, and those denying this are only kidding themselves. See for example the atheists who give in to the absurd, semi-religious, arguments for the existence of life on other planets in the absence of any proof at all.

We're never free of absurd beliefs, we just find new ways to have them. The trick is to separate belief from fact when doing science and only draw conclusions from the latter.

[rantanplan]

What the hell are you talking about?

Scientists do not believe in parallel universes, dark matter and all the other stuff you mentioned. They hypothesize about them, then they try to formulate theories and then they try to test these theories, by means of experiments.

When they do get to perform comprehensive experiments then, depending on the results, finally know what the truth is.

Not so much the same as with the beardy invisible man living in the sky now is it?

[robotresearcher]

> finally know what the truth is.

Not quite. The current substantiated hypothesis is always provisional until a better idea or contrary evidence turns up. That's not what most people call truth, and certainly not the kind of truth religious people have in mind.

[rantanplan]

You obviously didn't read about the comprehensive experiments I mentioned.

Sometimes I wonder why I spend time to respond to people. No one reads anything. People just want to disagree to pass the time.

[robotresearcher]

On the contrary, I mentioned 'substantiated hypothesis'. Comprehensive experiments are how a hypothesis becomes substantiated. There's no other way. And you rudely accuse me of not reading.

Even with an enormous and indefinite number of validating experiments, a theory is still provisional. There is no forever truth. For example consider Newtonian physics. For the 200 years until relativity and quantum mechanics were invented it was the best game in town. 200 years of experiment is pretty comprehensive. We can do experiments today that support Newtonian physics. But it was never 'true', because if you look very, very carefully you can find examples where it doesn't work.

You can not prove things true in science (unlike math), you can only disprove them. Things that resist disproof are held as provisionally true until we know better.

So: there is no moment when you "finally know what the truth is". Hence my disagreement with your post.

Scientists know what the truth isn't. There's a T-shirt slogan for you.

[rantanplan]

Sorry I didn't mean to insult you.

On the other hand what does all this have to do with the belief(as in faith) and the belief of scientists in various phenomena, theories etc?

You picked a word("truth") from my post and wrote an irrelevant(but kinda interesting) comment.

We were talking about the absurdity of believing in something(like god) rather than believing that something might hold true.

And then, you're just playing with words, you're not actually making a point.

If one would want to be concise they would say that everything can be true or false, for specific values of truthiness or falsiness under a particular context.

Case in point: Newtonian physics is true under a macroscopic context.

PS. I don't wear T-shirts that bear aphorisms.

[stefantalpalaru]

> beardy invisible man living in the sky

The only things actually pertinent to monotheistic doctrines are "invisible" and "living".

> Scientists do not believe in parallel universes, dark matter and all the other stuff you mentioned.

Of course they do. They create models and then try to interpret them using what looks more like philosophy than hard science. What they get sometimes is nothing short of unsubstantiated belief in absurd things. But as long as they don't try to pass that as the scientific truth, we don't mind. Crazy beliefs might lead to new discoveries, specially in that nebulous phase of hypothesis formulation.

[rantanplan]

No they don't. You are simply confused.

Read the definition from wikipedia: "Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty"

The reason why you're confused is simple; you conflate casual speech with literal definitions. When you hear scientists say "I believe that... blah blah" is a figure of speech. In the same way I used "what the hell" but I really don't believe in hell :)

What they mean actually is "I hypothesize that ... blah blah". That's why you won't see any scientific papers saying "I believe that the number must be something around... 42".

And by the way, even if they believed in the sense that you said, any evidence contrary to their beliefs would make them adjust their beliefs ;)

[engi_nerd]

Scientists are perfectly capable of holding beliefs that they cannot prove.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Believe_But_Cannot_Pro...

There's a whole book with responses from real scientists regarding this.