I agree. There’s some weird stuff that nobody can explain. Some phenomenons may be science we haven’t discovered yet, and dismissing them all means they’ll never be investigated further.
But don’t be basing your day to day activities on them.
That’s not at all how a scientist looks at the unknown. There are plenty of things we can’t yet explain, and maybe we will not understand them in our lifetimes. But science rejects the notion that anything cannot be understood, or that supernatural explanations can handwave away discrepancies. Like, if you were doing an experiment, and you got anomalous results, so you concluded that a fairy probably changed reality for a moment, you aren’t really doing science anymore. Science requires the fundamental axiom that the universe is consistent and governed by natural laws. Failures of those natural laws to predict outcomes is not a violation of the natural laws of the universe, but instead represent incomplete or incorrect understanding of them.
Which is not to say that you’re wrong about people. Humans can simultaneously hold incongruous thoughts. Some scientists can and do hold supernatural beliefs, it’s just that when they do, they aren’t doing science. This isn’t like saying they aren’t true Scotsmen. It’s more like a baker who is baking bread with a chisel and a block of wood. Their profession is still baking, so they are still bakers, but carving a loaf of wood is not really baking, and the result is not really bread.
I agree. There’s some weird stuff that nobody can explain. Some phenomenons may be science we haven’t discovered yet, and dismissing them all means they’ll never be investigated further.
But don’t be basing your day to day activities on them.
That’s not at all how a scientist looks at the unknown. There are plenty of things we can’t yet explain, and maybe we will not understand them in our lifetimes. But science rejects the notion that anything cannot be understood, or that supernatural explanations can handwave away discrepancies. Like, if you were doing an experiment, and you got anomalous results, so you concluded that a fairy probably changed reality for a moment, you aren’t really doing science anymore. Science requires the fundamental axiom that the universe is consistent and governed by natural laws. Failures of those natural laws to predict outcomes is not a violation of the natural laws of the universe, but instead represent incomplete or incorrect understanding of them.
Which is not to say that you’re wrong about people. Humans can simultaneously hold incongruous thoughts. Some scientists can and do hold supernatural beliefs, it’s just that when they do, they aren’t doing science. This isn’t like saying they aren’t true Scotsmen. It’s more like a baker who is baking bread with a chisel and a block of wood. Their profession is still baking, so they are still bakers, but carving a loaf of wood is not really baking, and the result is not really bread.