“Ross, could you just open your mind like this much?
Okay, now wasn't there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed the earth was
flat?
And up until like, what...
50 years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open
and this all mess and crap came out.
Now, are you telling me that you're so unbelievably arrogant that you can't admit that there's
a tiny tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?”
“There might be…”
“I can't believe you caved..."
"What?"
"You just abandoned your whole believe system!
Before I didn't agree with you, but at least I respected you!"
When debating with the religious, one of the most prominent mantras I receive is that “Science
changes its mind, and so why should we trust it?
It's meant as a slight on science, and it’s often said as if it somehow justifies the
conveyor’s religious beliefs... when, of course, it doesn't.
Now in response, I tend to sing "Science adjusts its views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved" – and I then go
on to explain why science changing its mind (or more accurately, the scientific community
altering its views) is a good thing!
That it’s a sign of remarkable humility, and that it should increase their trust in
science!
But despite the countless times I've had this exchange in person, I'm yet to have a video
dedicated to it, but, of course, that changes now.
However, first and foremost, I’m a little behind on my monthly patron giveaway, and
so this month has two winners!
William Holz, you’ve won 30 Second Psychology by Christian Jarrett, and David Junge, you’ve
won Lying by Sam Harris.
Congratulations, and, thank you sincerely for your support.
This is "Science Can't Be Trusted – Debunked”.
In 1687, the genius Isaac Newton published his masterwork, Principia Mathematica, and
within it laid the foundation of classical mechanics.
Now I’m going to avoid getting into the details, as they’re irrelevant to the crux
of this video, but if you’re interested in knowing more about Newton’s laws (or
indeed any of the subjects I reference within this video), then know that I’ve left links
in the description to far more educated and entertaining presenters than I. Anyhow, Newton’s
laws ruled supreme among the scientific community for over 2 centuries, but then the genius
Albert Einstein published his special and general theories of relativity, and in doing
so proved Newton wrong!
Except… of course, he didn’t.
That’s a misconception.
Einstein’s theories didn’t invalidate Newton’s… they superseded them.
They accounted for the same observations and they accounted for observations that Newton’s
did not.
For example, to make sense of Mercury’s seemingly odd orbit, Newtonian mechanics had
to assume the existence of another planet, while relativistic mechanics did not – it
simply and accurately described it without such an assumption.
Or as the phenomenal science-communicator, Neil deGrass Tyson, puts it: Einstein comes
along, comes up with his theory of motion, and his theory of gravity, the special and
general theory of relativity.
Out of those two theories, which… are corrections to Newton’s laws in these extreme regimes,
if you’re nearer the sun (the sun has very strong gravity)… if you’re moving around
in that strong force of gravity Newton’s laws begin to fail… and no one knew this.
And look at Einstein’s laws, and he says Mercury’s orbit will not follow Newton’s
laws it will follow this other path – find out, and it exactly explained the deviations
of Mercury!
And so people say ‘Oh, you see… scientists, we thought this was right, and now we all
huddle around this thing that’s right” – no!
That is not how it works, since 1600 onward.
The way it works is that if you have an experimentally determined result, and it’s verified, and
double checked, and triple checked, that will not later be shown to be false.
What you can find is a deeper understanding of the world that encloses that understanding.
That’s what happened with Einstein.
And so yes, in light of relativity, scientists altered their view (or changed their mind),
but what they changed was their interpretations, not their observations.
Those observation are still verifiable… they’re still a fact.
It’s not like we could use Newtonian mechanics to accurately determine the acceleration of
a falling apple one day, but not the next.
Science doesn’t make u-turns like that.
Anyhow, moving on, let’s look at a much-more clear-cut example of science changing its
mind that’s significantly more personal to us… one that changed our lives forever.
“Have you watched Slenderman?”
“Oh, it was so good!
The way he just came out the trees--" “Guys, guys, guys!
Dinosaurs had feathers!
Jurassic Park was wrong!
Yeah…”
Indeed, let’s talk about the discovery that the almighty dinosaurs, which literally mean
“terrible lizards”, had feathers… and thus are perhaps more accurately “terrible
birds” (or “dinopulia”).
Evidently, our ancestors stumbled upon remains of what we know now are dinosaurs thousands
of years ago, and most historians attribute such findings as the inspiration of many cultural
and religious myths.
But from the mid 19th century (which is when a truly scientific approach to dinosaurs began)
all the way up to the late 20th century, the prevailing view was that dinosaurs are a form
of squamata (or “scaled reptile”).
You know, similar to what’s depicted in the Jurassic Park franchise… except, of
course, for the velociraptors, which are the result of seriously extensive creative liberties.
“We’re over!”
However, with this said, one man didn’t draw the same reptilian conclusion… and
that man was Thomas Henry Huxley (otherwise known as Darwin’s Bulldog).
He, when analysing the morphology of the extraordinary fossil that is Archaeopteryx, proposed that
dinosaurs are more closely related to birds… but his views were largely dismissed.
That was, until the late 20th century, when significant evidence emerged connecting dinosaurs
with birds, such as John Ostrom’s discovery of Deinonychus, and a huge influx of feathered
dinosaur fossils from China, and thus, science changed its mind! Huxley was right!
They once thought that dinosaurs are monstrous lizards, but now they think they’re monstrous
birds!
Similarly, they once said that wine is good for us, but now they say it isn’t!
They once said that eggs increase our cholesterol, but they now say they don’t!
They once said that horizontally-striped clothing makes us look thin, but now they say it makes
us look fat!
“For ages you think ‘Okay, vertical stripes make people look thinner’, then you say
‘Oh, she's wearing vertical stripes, therefore she must be fatter than she looks’, therefore
you start thinking ‘Oh, she looks fat because she's wearing vertical stripes’, and so
suddenly horizontal stripes start making you look thin, and you start thinking 'Oh, she
must be thin, otherwise she'd never wear horizontal stripes.
And then you think 'Oh, horizontal stripes make you look thinner... she must be fat she's
wearing horizontal stripes!"
And so, such critics of science state “How can we trust science when it keeps changing
its damn mind?
At least the religious are consistent”, they proudly boast.
Yeah, I reply, consistently wrong!
Pretending that Darwin didn’t flatten the Garden of Eden, or that Copernicus didn’t
crush our geocentric ego, doesn’t somehow discredit such discoveries.
You see… this is one of the key differences between science and religion, and it’s just
one of the reasons that religion deserves none of the respect that it so insists upon,
while science deserves, at the very least, not to be grotesquely and incessantly misrepresented.
When someone discovers a fact or theory that contradicts religion, the religious condemn,
ostracised, and ban them and their work, and historically have enforced upon them imprisonment,
exile, and even death!
But when someone discovers a fact or theory that contradicts the scientific consensus,
scientists praise, reward, and celebrate them and their work.
They teach about their triumph, and in doing so inspire others to make similar such discoveries.
The fact that scientists change their views when new discoveries are made is an overwhelming
sign that they’re really interested in what’s true.
Such honesty… such humility, should never be looked down upon, and it’s about time
the religious stop doing it!
Now the last thing that I want to emphasis, and something that deserves a video all to
itself, is that many of the examples that critics give of “science changing its mind”
are actually not examples of science changing its mind… rather, they’re examples of
ignorant journalists and media outlets publishing their bias-interpretation of facts as facts
themselves… but again, this warrants its own video, but merited at least a fair mention
within this one too.
Anyhow, as always, thank you kindly for the view, and an extra special thank you to my
wonderful patrons and those of you who’ve donated via PayPal.
Without your help, videos such as this wouldn’t exist, and so from the bottom of my heart,
thank you.
And I’ll leave you with one more brilliant remark from the legend that is Neil deBunker
Tyson; “Einstein’s theories of motion and gravity… if you put in slow speeds and
low gravity in the equations, they become Newton’s equations.
So Newton’s universe is a subset (an accurately described subset) of a larger universe that
Einstein has described.
And even with Einstein, his equations can’t take us the centre of a black hole … the
singularity that’s there!
The singularity of the beginning of the universe!
We know now that his theories fail.
They blow up on the page.
And so we have a whole frontier of science […] to try and extend Einstein’s laws
into an even bigger regime that can then explain everything that’s in our universe not most
things.”