I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
Odraz vaší tváře v okně sděluje šokující objev v historii vědy: a sice, že svět na jeho nejhlubší úrovni řídí náhody; že věci se nakonec dějí zcela bez důvodu.
Convincing - and confident - disciplines, say, physics, tend to use little statistical backup, while political science and economics, which have never produced anything of note, are full of elaborate statistics and statistical “evidence” (and you know that once you remove the smoke, the evidence is not evidence).
In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.
The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes.
Bu nasıl oldu? Nasıl oldu da, insanoğlu, doğaya karşı kazandığı utkunun doruğundayken, kendi yarattığı şeylerin tutsağı haline geldi, nasıl oldu da, ciddi olarak kendi kendini yok etme tehlikesiyle karşı karşıya kaldı?
THESE ARE THE REASONS, THEN, FOR WHICH A MAN CAN BE CONFIDENT ABOUT THE FATE OF HIS SOUL – AS LONG AS IN LIFE HE HAS…DEVOTED HIMSELF TO THE PLEASURES OF AQUIRING KNOWLEDGE …WITH SELF CONTROL, AND GOODNESS, AND COURAGE, AND LIBERALITY, AND TRUTH…”SOCRATES’ LAST WORDS IN PLATO’S PHAEDO
The real bottleneck is software. Creating software can be done only the old-fashioned way. A human -sitting quietly in a chair with a pencil, paper and laptop- is going to have to write the codes... One can mass-produce hardware and increase it's power by piling on more and more chips, but you cannot mass-produce the brain.
Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system... We find such systems within living organisms.
It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]
I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I'm supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I'm praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.
I am using the word theory as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that means "guess." To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is "just a theory" too.
Nature has no originality--I mean, no large ability in the matter of inventing new things, new ideas, new stage effects. She has a superb and amazing and infinitely varied equipment of old ones, but she never adds to them. She repeats--repeats--repeats--repeats. Examine your memory and your experience; you will find it is true.
In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.
Just as primitive man believed himself to stand face to face with demons and believed that could he but know their names he would become their master, so is contemporary man faced by this incomprehensible, which disorders his calculations. "If I can but grasp it, if I can but cognise it", so he thinks, "I can make it my servant.
