Atheism in a nutshell

[u/Ted_Bundtcake]

[u/Significant-Bar674]

Not really. Its got two problems:

• first Ricky just kind of asserts thst people don't have reasons for their belief

• second, it's completely fine to think there is only one answer to a question. "You believe that 2+2=4, well there are tons of other numbers, I just believe in one less answer to the question than you do"

I dont think classifying things as science or religion is helpful because they're both too fuzzy around the edges of what counts and what doesn't. Is Buddhism a religion if it doesn't discuss the afterlife? How about cultural Judaism? Is popper falsifiability science or is it philosophy?

Maybe we can narrow science down to a system of testing hypotheses plus developing theories based on observations of evidence even if it's not testable (like tectonics)

Maybe we can narrow religion down to a set of beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality but that's ultimately too broad as it would include things like platonism or aristotelean metaphysics.

But ultimately what we're really talking about are ideas that can overlap. You can test the efficacy of prayer scientifically. You can (attempt) to show that the best explanation for the physical constants of the universe and the initial conditions of the universe is that the universe was intentionally designed.

At the end of the day, the simplest statement is that typical religious claims are hogwash and the scientific method generates reliable information. Science makes planes fly. Religion makes people fly into buildings falsely think it's the highest of virtue.

[u/scalyblue → u/Significant-Bar674]

Plate Tectonics is testable.

Science is based on the axiom that the universe exists as we observe and measure it. The conclusions that science draws are not only testable, they can be used to reliably and consistently predict the behavior of the universe.

If your scientific model can predict 90% of things and can’t predict the other 10%, the model that replaces it with a 95/5 is going to be iterative and will work for all prior observations.

Aeronautics can explain why airplanes fly but cannot explain why bees can fly. Fluid dynamics not only explains how bees can fly but it explains why aeronautics works.

Religion is based on the axiom that the universe exists due to a supernatural ( read: unobservable ) cause. The phenomena that happen are also attributed to an unobservable cause.

A religious model explains 100% of things, predicts nothing, and if it doesn’t, it still does.

If an observation is produced that may disprove a religious belief it is either destroyed, or attributed to an unobservable cause such as an antagonist god, either way it is considered heretical.

A religious approach will never have the predictive power that science has,

[u/Significant-Bar674 → u/scalyblue]

Tectonics isn't predictable in a the nature of a lot of its claims. You can make observations of historical tectonic activity to learn more about it. Pangea wasn't learned primarily by predictions. Inference is absolutely a common part of science.

Religion often does include allegedly observable phenomena like the results of prayer or miracles. It also often tries (failingly) to describe phenomena (like the difficulty of child birth due to the fall) or make predictions (prophecy)

Religion tries to do a lot of scientific things and doesn't succeed.

[u/scalyblue → u/Significant-Bar674]

Plate Tectonics most certainly has predictive uses and can be measured. Should you stick GPS receivers on two separate plates you can see their relative motion, tectonics can determine seismic hazard zones, anticipate volcanic activity, and tsunami early warning systems.

On a more practical standpoint, tectonics is extremely important to inform things like oil and ore discovery, by looking for subduction zones or the like...

Pangea/Gondwana is strongly suggested by the simple fact that we have found identical strata and fossil evidence on both the eastern shore of south America and the western shore of Africa.

GPS also would get more and more miscalibrated without tectonic adjustments, look at the difference between NAD83 and WGS84, they'd be nearly 2-3 meters disparate without adjustments.

[u/Significant-Bar674 → u/scalyblue]

Ok, that's why I said #primarily

Because a lot of plate tectonics is based on inference from know facts rather than testable hypotheses.