>
> Bought into what??? Science is maybe the wrong word to use
> because you seem to have some preconceived notions.
...all notions are preconceived in the absence of new information.
Science is
> merely taking a good look at things and improving our outlook
> through continuous observation and its tests and applications.
...that's not "science". You're talking about an investigative
process, whereas science is a particular body or system of knowledge.
(I'll avoid pasting in any dictionary references, but they're out
there).
...things found out through the scientific method are wonderful. It's
a good method. [but not the only method]
> Sometimes our views are biased and we arrive at a false conclusion.
...all our views are always biased, all conclusions are false.
> Science; the continuing testing of knowledge, through reasoning,
> is our way to gain understanding of all the worlds we wish to
> explore. Through critical thinking we make our way.
...wonderful. All I'm saying is that scientific convention discards enormous amounts of data which are cast in terms and symbol sets outside of a very restricted paradigm [with reductionist and modularist tendencies]. Many advocates of experimental science advance the cause of critical thinking, too few are willing to apply that criticism to their own discipline.
There is
> science of economics, political science, geological science. It
> is just knowledge, not some esoteric cult with priests with sole
> access to knowledge.
...there is science of relation to the divine, science of the experiential development of the humyn mind, science of semiotics and the modelling of culturally significan symbol forms. Myth has much to teach. So does science - let's look at both, bring everything to the table and put it all together until it fits right.
We are all scientists every day in every
> decision we reach. We take our knowledge and reason out our
> decisions.
...we make countless decisions every day, all the time, some of them quite significant without use of the process of reason. (which is a conscious process by necessity).
> Wisdom is not immediate with knowledge. It grows through stages.
> Knowledge is empty without the wisdom to put it into proper
> contexts and relevancies.
...myth is the deliberately coded and transmitted wisdom of the last thousands of centuries of humyn experience.
> I do not see the universe as infinite. It started and it may
> finish.
...properly speaking the universe did not start. It will not end. This makes assumptions about linearity and time which have no basis according to the findings of the scientific investigation of such things. (a standard to which you apparently hold) ...time viewed as a field phenomenon and not a spatially derived linear process makes more sense.
Of course the universe may have properties that enable it
> to stay in existence forever. Ideas put forth by Ernest Sternglass
> (Before the Big Bang) would, if shown to be true, shake up physics
> as we know it. And there seems to be a finite amount of mass here
> also. Is Infinity a myth of myths like an omnipotent being?
...but the universe is not something which exists in time. Our particular experientially defined segment of the manifold exists in time but that's a particular property of our system of organization and can't be imposed on the flux.
> Crazy was not the right word. Chaos would be more appropriate.
> Out of chaos the universe orders.
...order is a product of consciousness. Unless you're willing to grant the universe consciousness (and hey, who knows, you might be) then order and the universe don't have anything to do with each other.
A simple "craziness" example
> would be running around in our solar system before the planets
> were completely formed. It would surely appear crazy to the
> pilot. But out of it came order and stability.
...only if there's a pilot there watching it. Order according to a particular schema for relating data, stability within a particular linear timeframe on a limited scale.
And the simple
> laws of mass and space are what ordered this solar system into
> regularity from a bunch of rocks and dust flying around a protostar.
...laws are constructs based on habit. Regularity is an illusion of limited perspective. A bunch of rocks and dust flying around a protostar would be a system that would itself contain countless examples of ever changing spontaneously generated ordered systems - just collapsing in shorter timeframes from the pov of our imaginary pilot - but sit that pilot at a fixed point for a hundred trillion years and the present configuration of our solar system starts looking a whole lot less stable & regular. The same thing happens if you reduce the theatre of observation to a quantum scale where the number of variables in the [solar system] unit start to expand - as complexity of the set increases the apparent range of order shrinks.
> Reason is the hallmark that distinguishes us from all of the other
> species.
...you really think so? What is it about reason that gives us this exclusive claim on it?
Every little opinion you have is based upon your reasoning
> facilites.
...this is patently untrue. Especially in a mediascape charged with meme-laden viral information constructs. The deliberate packaging of information in an engineered ideosphere (ie. north america and probably beyond near the end of the second millenium of the common era according to the gregorian dating system) ensures that most opinions are formed without critical examination through the faculty of reason. Otherwise this forum would be wholly unnecessary.
Reason is simple and useful, not magic.
...it would cloud the issue if I started a discussion about the utility of magic now, wouldn't it?
If you wish
> to live an unreasonable existence, fine. Reason led to all the
> discoveries that enable us to have this dialogue instead of
> discussing a demon haunted world in a town with no plumbing.
...which is one of my problems with reason. It lead to a state of
affairs where you and I are having this discussion while the vast
proportion of the humyn population lives in filth and ignorance, it
fosters reliance on a particular and exclusionary system for
investigating and organizing the world and it outrightly rejects any
non-reductive analysis of experience.
...further, the present exoteric popular science is of no more value
in understanding the world than exoteric understandings of particular
sets of myth. Esoteric understanding of the deep structure of any
system relies on the acknowledgment of that structure - [the
scientific method makes asumptions about the workings of the
universe, to understand the meaning of the findings of that
investigative method it is necessary to understand those
assumptions.]
...especially in a quantum universe where - more often than not - we
find what we're looking for.
-psypher