If your models of reality don’t well map reality, don’t jibe smoothly with experience, make better models, redraft your maps: from scratch if necessary.
This wisdom is not natural to human individuals. Science is rare. No individual can be a "scientist" 100% of the time.
This wisdom is anathema to societies. Societies routinely stretch the bottom of their budget to buttress beliefs that have bumped against experience. Where the university has invested in Newtonian physics, it will resist relativity. Where the university has invested in relativity physics, it will resist quantum incompatibility. Where the Temple has elected its Sanhedrin, it will resist Christ. And where the Temple has accepted the rule of Caesar -- and which temple has not, it will compromise. Caiaphas can interrupt and contradict Jesus, Pilat can judge Jesus without any obligation to demonstrate understanding of what Jesus says: only what Caesar says.
The middle part of the previous paragraph instantly distanced the religious, the latter part alienated the scientists. That’s tough, I hold to the relationship, the apotheosis of reason doesn’t suspend homeostasis.
Besides, Michael Behe claims that most scientists do believe in god (the god of order, the god of design), and I suspect that Behe is right: in more than one thing.
Anyone still here: please understand: I use Christ as a symbol, and Jesus too. There’s no dogma in my meaning. There’s a little bit of "Christ" in any revolutionary, any ugly duckling, anyone blocked from the table. I don’t mean that there is an independent thing, immortal, infallible, and 100% a Christ. And I certainly don’t mean that a man called Jesus and crucified two thousand years ago was the only one to try to upgrade a church, a culture, and get kicked in the face.
Science too is based in belief, but science contrasts with religion in that science is supposed to welcome new maps whereas churches are fortified against review.
My piece on Falsification: No Truth Without It: The Wason Test has been at Knatz.com for five years and counting. The above is today’s revisit.
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