Scientific skepticism

time. An accepted scientific theory does not need to be a law to be considered truthful. A scientific law, on the other hand is in itself a theory that has gain more universal acceptance. However, a scientific law can, even though rarely, be changed if new information is acquired. The problem is when people believe that because theories and very few times laws are reconsidered and changed they should always look science with skepticism, but this attitude towards science can become cynicism when someone believes everything is relative. At the same time, a moderate amount of skepticism is healthy for science itself so that it can try and put to test the different theories and laws. A theory is a heuristic approach towards a problem that through testing has given us a better understanding of a phenomena. In other words, a theory is a law in the making. The scientific community needs to test and re-test a theory in order to be considered a law. But, this process does not makes it less truthful than a law. It is not the right approach to be skeptical about theories because they…

positions, it is also not a Good Reason to disbelieve them either. Who is to say that true moral beliefs are not what is most fit? Would it not make sense for objective morality to have characteristics that would aid in the survival of a community? Sure, evolution is bound to get off track a little bit, but here we must focus on degrees of reason. We must assume our beliefs are innocent until proven guilty by Good Reason, and that most of our beliefs are probably close enough to the truth,…

unavoidable. The three chronic ailments of life are death, futility, and suffering. Three of the many solutions made up for these three things are going to be talked about. Stoicism, Skepticism, and life after death are few solutions offered to these ailments. However, do these ideas provide us any logical answers to death, futility, and suffering? Stoicism Stoicism is an ancient Greek solution that means to be withdrawn from a situation indifferently. Stoics accept the fact that our existence…

During our time in the world, Christians often find themselves in close contact with skeptics- agnostics, atheists, or those people who simply don’t care about a spiritual life, who all have their own reasons to distrust the church and the Bible as a whole. The questions these people pose are not simple ones, not questions that can be answered by a simple “John 3:16” or a “Jeremiah 29:11.” How then should we, as a part of the body of Christ, react to and answer those people who desire more…

will not let him believe other bad things in this world. Through his thinking, we may believe that the Lord God would not lie to him about anything (Crawford 20). Descartes discovers that it is almost impossible to continue with his habit of forming assumptions and opinions out of his head. The resolution he gets is to try to pretend that these ideas are all false and out of order to counter his thinking Analysis Gard et al. (137), suggests that the first meditation can be approached in two…

Leonardo Di Vinci once said, “The greatest decision men suffer is from their own decisions.” Deception can occur in everyday life and is an important process for building relationships or in general social interaction. In the Shakespearean play, Hamlet uses deception to reveal the role that Claudius had in the death of his father. Hamlet uses deception to gain the knowledge needed to indict Claudius with the murder of his father, while Claudius is using deception to cover up his role within…

Game- An Analysis of the Intellectual Enterprise, the comparison and contrasting methods of two ways that humans process information presents itself in an almost biased manner as one begins to form an opinion about which method of processing information is actually deemed supreme. The author describes the two components as a game. As any game would be played, there are two teams. (For example if you were to take into account this passage, the two teams would be belief and doubt.) These teams…

René Descartes: Meditation 1 René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He was given the title of the “father of modern western philosophy”. Many of his writings are studied closely in today’s time. The purpose of most of his writings is what he cannot doubt. Many see philosophy as an opinion, and it is exactly that. You can state a point, have a reason behind it, and that is a philosophy. Throughout meditation one, beliefs, dreams, and senses are discussed.…

The René Descartes’ main purpose was finding whether some truths really existed or not. It does not have to be forgot, indeed, that he came from a period of time when sciences did still not have a framed system of values, therefore he wanted to find a truth, between a lot of possible illusions: namely, tidiness among chaos. In this essay, I will explore Descartes’ meeting with the sceptical challenge of what he calls Demon Doubt, by providing evidence of this, as well as an explanation of what…

Descartes used his Method of Doubt in order to find out what is the truth, in the sense that what he believes in is able to be confirmed without any probability of reasonable doubt. Within this method of pursuing the truth, Descartes doubts everything he encounters until he was able to feel content with knowing what could only be considered truthful without anything doubts. Eventually this doubt progressed to Descartes’ own existence. One thing Descartes pressured during his journey to finding…