How sad that we’re resorting to name-calling. Scientistas? Really? I find it hard to swallow that commenters are urged to refrain from name-calling and to address the facts, and here we have a blog which itself quotes somone who is name-calling and yet offers no censure whatsoever for it, and which once again makes a claim for a position whilst offering no supported examples.

Must we take the existence of this “knowledge” on faith?

The scientists who have argued against ‘other ways of knowing’ have gone out of their way to refute th assertion made in the above quote. But I urge Sarewitz not to take my “knowledge” this; he can verify it for himself by reading, for example, what people like Jerry Coyne have actually said on this topic, and then might he consider deigning to apologize to the “scientistas” for making such a bigoted claim?

But by far the worst part this claim is that it side-steps the real issue. Experiencing “wonder and awe” (which is/can be well understood scientifically) does not count as gaining knowledge in the way that documented scientific discovery does.

What such proponents are doing is nothing more than confusing subjective feeling with objective fact. For example, the effect of gravity has nothing to do with how you feel. You may feel wonderful as a child when you first fly high on a swing. You may feel terrified. But gravity is the same in both cases.

So what is the knowledge gained there? Are we to conclude from this new-found “knowledge” that it’s a known fact that swinging high is wonderful, or are we to conclude that it’s a terrifying ordeal to which no child should ever be subjected? How would you make a case for either side?

The answer is that without science, you cannot. Objectively, the only valid “knowledge” here is scientific – which may well tell you that because of our evolutionary history we will like love riding a swing, but that because of other evolutionary biochemical issues, there are some who will not.

The “knowledge” supposedly gleaned from the thrilled child and the terrified child will never predict which other children will be thrilled or terrified, not even if the other children are siblings of the first child.

Yes, you can communicate this “knowledge” by saying you were thrilled or terrfied. Yes, you can urge on another child with your “certain knowledge” that they will be thrilled, or you can warn a child away with scary stories based on your “hard won knowledge”, but that cannot offer any sort of prediction, solace, or guarantee for any child because it’s nothing more than a feeling that’s intensely personal to you, just as religion is. It’s not objective knowledge in the way science offers knowledge.

After all this “knowledge”, the sad fact remains that we have no more knowledge now than we did before reading this blog. Once again we see neither concrete examples of what things are known for a fact (in the same way we can know scientific discoveries for a fact and that we know not as subjective individuals, but as a community, just as the scientific community knows things) from this “other way of knowing”, nor how such “knowledge” can be independently and reliably verified.

Another quote:
“By contrast, the Angkor temples demonstrate how religion can offer an authentic personal encounter with the unknown”

Seriously?

This “authentic personal encounter” has no more to do with religion than does a sunset or a view of the night sky, or the feeling of having completed a marathon, or a novel, or a hard shift at work.

You may be convinced in your “knowledge” that your weekend sucked, but tell me: is this “knowledge” a simultaneous confirmation of the delusional nature of the scientistas who live next door, and who have the shameful temerity to declare that their weekend was wonderfully refreshing despite your certain “knowledge” that it wasn’t? Does this objectively tell us anything truly useful about the unknown quantity “future weekend”?

You may be convinced that there are other ways of truly honestly knowing, but you certainly are not going to convince me that you have a case with such wishy-washy, anecdotal, subjective “data”.

Sorry.

I am an atheist and an enthusiastic follower of science. I don’t know if I could follow the mathematics behind the Higgs, but I have not in fact done so. I do not have “belief in the Higgs”. I note that a number of scientists think they have detected the Higgs, and I await further evidence. I am aware that, based on past history, they could be right or wrong. But at least they are making the effort to find out.

This is nothing like “faith” in the religious sense. Religious faith is commonly seen as a virtue, and its denial as a moral failing, even in the face of contrary evidence. That is miles away from science.

I was taught that the first requirement of science is to c0me up with a clear hypothesis. I don’t see one here. Put forward your hypothesis about Dark Knight and then we’ll see if science can test it. I’m betting that it can. Simply making vague linguistic gestures towards ‘understanding’ doesn’t help us to work out what the hell hypothesis it is you think we should be investigating.

Almost none of them are true and consistent with the facts.