Ben Stein
- Thread starter Einherjar86
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It's a true statement. Look at the History Channel, National Geographic, Discover, Popular Science, Skeptic, etc...
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Saying "Evolution has money behind it" is like saying gravity has money behind it. If it weren't for the intelligent design/christian lobby, evolution would be just like gravity, sexual reproduction, chemical reactions etc. Just generally accepted fact based on a massive amount of evidence.
No, it is an utterly false statement. Saying that science is a business is as ridiculous as saying that art is a business. Science is at its core nothing more than the quest for knowledge. It has no inherent ties to business or materialism at all.
The fact that there are TV channels or magazines about science doesn't make science a business (and if you look at how much they make with those, it certainly isn't a very lucrative one). By that logic everything is a business, afterall there also are news papers and general interest magazines that can write or report about literally anything. Furthermore by that logic science didn't exist before there were magazines and TV, which is equally absurd.
Scientists do not do what they do because it will end up in a magzine. Most scientific research never ends up anywhere other than scientific research papers. Nor are they paid by the money that is earned by selling that magazine. Nor does that magazine rely on any specific scientific theory to be valid or invalid in order to sell anything. If evolution (or more accurately, natural selection, as I can see no way that evolution as a concept in itself can be found to be "wrong") is falsified at some point then none of the TV channels or magazines you just mentioned will be affected by that in any way. They will report it the same way they report any other scientific breakthrough and people will buy them all the same. The idea that National Geographic has money riding on the scientific theory of evolution is absurd.
That's not to say that there is no such thing as for-profit science (look at the ************** industry for instance) but as a whole saying "Science is a business" makes no sense and is just fundamentally wrong. And I can guarantee you that many scientists who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of knowledge would almost certainly find the notion offensive.
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Cut it with the obscenity CAIRATH
Also, not to change the subject but are you still going to make that science/religion website?
Also, not to change the subject but are you still going to make that science/religion website?
You know I love the drugz.
I continue to passively collect material for something like that but I haven't really undertaken anything yet no. Lately the portion of my time where I actively feel like doing something constructive has been eaten up by RYM and a completely unrelated programming project I've been working on. But I haven't scrapped the idea or anything.
I continue to passively collect material for something like that but I haven't really undertaken anything yet no. Lately the portion of my time where I actively feel like doing something constructive has been eaten up by RYM and a completely unrelated programming project I've been working on. But I haven't scrapped the idea or anything.
You've just stated what science SHOULD be; but it's not. Likewise, what you just said is what religion SHOULD be; again, it isn't. Science is all about money, my friend. Sure, there are a few minor researchers here and there doing what they want because they love it. But there are also a few minor Christians here and there who tolerate other religions and preach peace and coexistence.
I don't care if they find it offensive; it's true, and your refusal to admit that is simply ignorant. Science journals and periodicals have an economic interest in promoting and supporting specific theories.
Of course science existed before magazines and television. It existed as a pure form, sure, and it still exists in its pure form in some cases; but so does religion. Companies and corporations develop economic interests in scientific advancements and progress. When they do, they offer money to those advancements. This creates an incentive for scientists to work towards a specifically economic end. I'm not saying evolution was created in that way, but many developmental theories are.
And sure, there are plenty of scientists whose research never goes anywhere. You know what happens to them? Their funding gets cut. And if another theory comes along claiming to disprove evolution, I'd be willing to bet that it's going to face a great deal of firepower. All modern scientific experiments and understandings are based off of past scientific research accepted fact. Evolution has practically become accepted fact. It is a foundation. Scientific research programs and corporations don't want to scrap funding and start all over again. It's not as though science has some unending stream of cash. It's a business too.
skeptik
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Evolution IS a fact, so of course a theory contesting that evolution is a myth would come under heavy firepower. So would somebody suggesting that books do not have words in them. Surely such a proposition would come under heavy scrutiny.
What you are completely ignoring is the fact that while money may play an incentive role in scientific development, and that there is a business side to science, that does not mean that "Science is a business." That is like saying that freedom is a business. The US government achieves a great deal of its foreign policy ends via its selling of freedom around the world, but that hardly amounts to such a conclusion. Maybe you should reword your statement to something less absurd, such as "Science has serious ties to a business side that may occasionally play a significant role in avenues that certain persons or institutions may take." That, again, hardly amounts to the pejorative corporate structure that your statement implies, whether that was your goal or not.
What you are completely ignoring is the fact that while money may play an incentive role in scientific development, and that there is a business side to science, that does not mean that "Science is a business." That is like saying that freedom is a business. The US government achieves a great deal of its foreign policy ends via its selling of freedom around the world, but that hardly amounts to such a conclusion. Maybe you should reword your statement to something less absurd, such as "Science has serious ties to a business side that may occasionally play a significant role in avenues that certain persons or institutions may take." That, again, hardly amounts to the pejorative corporate structure that your statement implies, whether that was your goal or not.
A huge portion of scientific research is done at universities and government funded research laboratories. None of which has anything to do with "business". Infact nearly all purely theoretical and cutting edge science is done this way because a lot of it has no immediate real world applicability and therefor is commercially risky and uninteresting (astronomy, nuclear fusion, quantum mechanics, etc.) not to mention expensive and time consuming. It is research strictly done to further our understanding of how the universe works, and that may or may not have future real world applicability and open up other avenues of future research. If science were a business as you have so uneloquently stated, this kind of research would not exist and science would be restricted to inventing bigger televisions and faster internet technology.
Science mainly overlaps with business in areas where it is working directly on producing something that can be commercially exploited (such as medicine or consumer technology) and even then it is hardly fair to call science a business. The people doing the actual work in the labs are still scientists working by scientific principles, and not business men. And no amount of corporate funding is going to get a scientifically flawed theory through the rigorous peer review process that any scientific theory goes through. Much like no amount of corporate funding is going to prevent scientists from falsifying an already accepted theory when it turns out to be falsifiable.
But clearly none of this even remotely applies to a theory like evolution. It is completely commercially unexploitable much like the theory of gravity is and I can see absolutely no vested financial interest in it from any angle, something you claimed there was just a few posts ago and have yet to back up with anything sensible.
Calling science a business is crude and fundamentally inaccurate much like calling art a business is.
Science mainly overlaps with business in areas where it is working directly on producing something that can be commercially exploited (such as medicine or consumer technology) and even then it is hardly fair to call science a business. The people doing the actual work in the labs are still scientists working by scientific principles, and not business men. And no amount of corporate funding is going to get a scientifically flawed theory through the rigorous peer review process that any scientific theory goes through. Much like no amount of corporate funding is going to prevent scientists from falsifying an already accepted theory when it turns out to be falsifiable.
But clearly none of this even remotely applies to a theory like evolution. It is completely commercially unexploitable much like the theory of gravity is and I can see absolutely no vested financial interest in it from any angle, something you claimed there was just a few posts ago and have yet to back up with anything sensible.
Calling science a business is crude and fundamentally inaccurate much like calling art a business is.
??? Books do not have words in them? Your analogy is terrible.
Once again, Principle of Charitable Interpretation. "Science is business" is just a quick way of saying what you clarified above.
Okay, Nec, Cairaith, et al, I'm convinced that this is going nowhere. Personally, I think some of you underestimate the amount of influence that money and incentives have on scientific research. Cairaith, cutting edge research is done only through University funding which is given most generously to those research groups that have the greatest potential of yielding results; that's a fact. And furthermore, art is a business man. It generates revenue and income, it's a fucking business. However, I can't even remember right now how we came upon all these avenues of argument in the first place. We differ on basis of opinion, so I'm not going to keep saying you're wrong or trying to prove everyone wrong. If anyone else has anything to say regarding the Ben Stein movie or his beliefs or anything, feel free. I'm growing weary of this argument, though.
Melodeath
Moonbow
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No it was a good analogy. Intelligent Design is as absurd as saying books don't have words in them and therefore deserves the same amount of flak that such a statement would receive.
skeptik
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Actually, his analysis of my analogy is exactly that. It is precisely as absurd to attempt to refute the proposition that evolution is fact as it is to attempt to refute the proposition that books contain words. Both will be lambasted with equal scrutiny, both for the absurdity of the very nature of the claim of overturning documented fact and for the causationally shoddy nature of the supposed evidence that would have to be employed to support these claims (and, most ironically, much of the evidence for the latter claim will most likely rest on words found in books). To later on discover that science was wrong about evolution is about as likely as the world later coming to the realization that books do not, in fact, contain words. Hyperbolic, perhaps, but the analogy itself is solid. Evolution is fact. Most of the mechanisms of the evolutionary process are fact. What is not fact is to what extent each mechanism contributes and has contributed throughout the course of evolutionary history.
AchrisK
Weakling
Just saw the movie. I liked it. I would recommend it...unless you're scared.
Note: You = whoever
Note: You = whoever
skeptik
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Be sure to check out www.expelledexposed.com to see how completely and utterly wrong nearly everything in the movie assuredly is.
AchrisK
Weakling
AchrisK
Weakling
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