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July 8, 2010 / Science

The Difference Between Science & Faith

Wherein I ruminate on a difference between science & faith, using new information on the size of protons as an example.

Science continually reevaluates its conclusions and assumptions and is able to recognize when those conclusions are wrong after testing and experimentation:

Protons are 0.00000000000000003 meters smaller than we thought. That sounds like nothing, but it means one of these things must be true: Undiscovered particles are lurking, quantum mechanics needs recalculating…or the universe is impossible. (Here’s hoping it’s the first two.) Link

Faith doesn’t.

What’s interesting is that for many, the strength of the scientific method (the ability to question assumptions and even change its conclusions about the nature of the universe), is seen as a weakness. I don’t just mean those right-wing ideologues who refuse to understand the nature of climate change. I think there are a lot of people out there (liberals and progressives included) who can get very frightened by a universe that isn’t fixed. Remember the resentment about Pluto being demoted? For those who are my age, remember how fundamentally wrong it seemed when you found out that the “Brontosaurus” doesn’t exist and was merely the incorrect identification of an apatosaurus (with the wrong head even!)?

The world is a big and scary place in many ways, and when science comes along and says, “you know what, after experimentation and testing, we discovered that we were wrong and the nature of the universe is different than what we’ve been saying for a while now,” people get agitated and upset and they feel distrustful because, for the most part, we like to pretend that our world is constant and consistent.

On this day..

  • Let Us Find Ourselves A Worthy Goal - 2010
  • Playing the Negative: Theatre as "Not . . . But" - 2007
  • Shameless plug - 2006
  • This is your brain ... This is your brain on 35 - 2005

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Liminal

1: of or relating to a sensory threshold

2: barely perceptible

3: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition

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