They are just a "Like" farm. They use their tracking of likes to mine relationships so you can get personalized spam that appears that it came from your friends.
What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.
... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others.
There is no "good ignorance".
This can't be stated enough; (the following is anecdotal) the amount of blatantly incorrect information being spread through the use of what I dub 'feel good infographics' across the internet is astonishing. The viewer looks at something, feels good about what they've read and then shares it because it passed their own personal sentiment analysis.
It's kind of frightening because it sets the stage for all sorts of astroturfing and conditioning to spread; if anything we should look at the Boston Bomber/Reddit incident as evidence of this feel good propaganda. People were so eager to attach to the notion that they had 'caught the bastard' only for the truth to come out later that they had completely fingered the wrong guy.
The problem arises when people share untrue information out of the notion that they're spreading science. Comprehension is indeed expensive and scarce, which means recognizing the borders of your own knowledge and the start of your own ignorance is extremely important. Pseudoscientific drivel has no place anywhere.
Whereas the facebook page does nothing like this at all - it's just funny pictures with a theme. It doesn't encourage any way of thinking or promote figuring out the world.
As much as I'd like it to be true, looking at a bunch of .gifs about quantum mechanics and astrophysics plastered with white majuscules does little for one's understanding of science. In other words, IFLS is to the scientific community as r/atheism is to the religious-sceptics community (not the best analogy...).
People who have done science degrees are coming out and still believing in forms of magic like organic, chiropractics, chemical free, anthropomorphizing animals etc.
It's a fine line, should we appease the masses and try and get more scientists or try and at least get the supposed scientists practising and believing in actual science.
The absolute only good thing about this is that it fights fire with fire: that is, it uses tribalism to fight tribalism.
But that's all it is. Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity, and it's a problem whether or not magical woo is involved. It's the same kind of thing when people think that calling out a fallacy is some kind of argumentative coup d'etat.
Or let's bring this back to software and business. How exactly do you feel when your sales team drastically overpromises your engineering capabilities?
That's how I feel.
A lack of belief in God is not a belief in a God. Your example is ignorant.
Can reason an scientific method itself be an Idol? And if you do not cherish those things do you think it's better since you are truly not a believer in anything? Even the method that verifiebly gives humanity models of predictive utility that gave us almost all we enjoy today?
Religion is the belief in an absence of evidence. Science is the whole of objective reality. You don't seem to understand what "science" and "religion" actually mean, but you really don't like persons who don't believe in anything, so you assign bizarrely negative qualifiers for someone who knows things.
No one on earth worships "SCIENCE". It's a tool we use daily, whether you understand why things work or not.
The problem with ifls and equivalents is that that is actually what they are encouraging. They misrepresent "science" completely.
May be you have some particular religion in mind, but many beliefs coexist happily with science.
There is a domain where atheists and many religious people agree on. Which is the domain that is not covered by the particular religion and that is covered by the scientific method (do an experiment, analyse data, get conclusions, rinse, repeat). Choice of medicine is one such area. True, some religions believe in voodoo or other "alternative medicine" but that is not part of the definition of religion.
The critical question is what to do with things we have no physical evidence of, things which we have no data of, are uncertain of. Things that science has not reached a verdict on. Religions typically have loads of these. The existence of god/gods for example. Having such a belief does not contradict the available science at the time, so we can have a scientist who believes in gods carrying on his research cheerfully. Atheists don't believe in gods unless there is physical proof. That also does not contradict doing some scientific research. The issue comes when you mistake "SCIENCE", the tool we use daily, with "science", the set of propositions, heuristics, conjectures and half-baked theories that will always exist at the frontiers of research. That effectively means you choose to place your trust in the set of current researchers and if they get it wrong, you get it wrong.
In short, science is not and has never been the whole of objective reality. This assigns mythical powers to scientists, which some would certainly call a "religion".
Totally! Perfectly faithful Christians can be Evolutionary Biologists without falling victim to fundamentalist anti-science idiocy.
"The critical question is what to do with things we have no physical evidence of, things which we have no data of, are uncertain of. Things that science has not reached a verdict on. Religions typically have loads of these. The existence of god/gods for example."
That's the realm of social science, not hard science, seeing as there is always going to be zero physical evidence of "God"/gods.
"In short, science is not and has never been the whole of objective reality. This assigns mythical powers to scientists, which some would certainly call a "religion"."
Again, "Science" is reality. Scientists do not have mythical powers. They are human. They are however the best we have to understand objective reality, through our feeble and failing minds. We do quite a good job, and conflating priests with scientists shows how little persons understand what facts and objective evidence versus subjectivity, belief, and perspective. Priests are "infallible". Science is not. And that is a very good thing.
Outside of parapsychology, cold fusion, and free energy devices, how are you stating that this occurs as a regular practice? I criticize scientists from within the framework of poor evidence, biases, systemic issues, but calling it a "religion" misses the point. Personal biases don't make a religion. Watered down pop-science isn't a religion either.
Both of these claims are 100% false.
Religion does have significant evidence; the problematic part of religion is in its interpretation of that evidence, rather than the evidence itself. This ranges from the metaphysical "X exists, therefore God" to the specific incidences of revival tents and miracle workers. This is evidence. Just because you have a different interpretation does not automatically invalidate theirs.
Science is a fucking method, not some "whole". There is and possibly always will be parts of reality that we do not know. We cannot stand outside reality, by definition, and we will always have non-objective biases coloring our perspective. Pretending to be objective is self-delusion. Trying to be objective is worthy and good, but recognize that you can't be.
Faith does not have empirical evidence. It has philosophical arguments backing it. Religion would cease becoming supernatural otherwise. There's a reason why theology is a soft social science and not a physical science (no matter what the Discovery Institute may tell you.)
"Science is a fucking method, not some "whole". "
Science is both a reflection of our current understanding of reality and the method of how we refine our understanding of it.
"Pretending to be objective is self-delusion" We are not objective creatures there is a vast difference between nature and those who ~practice~ science.
Here's a write-up on the problematic nature of the methodology you use:
http://www.wideopenground.com/fundamentalism-and-foundationa...
I think the comparison is valid. Some hardline atheists can be as vindicative, presumptuous and arrogant as religious people and that attitude is a problem (
Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion.
Atheists can be assholes? Why does that even need to be said? Atheists are people and run the same set of qualities that any human can possess.
"Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion."
Religion or lack thereof has nothing to do with being an asshole. Software "zealots" promote their fanatical opinions but they don't worship "software".
It's a crappy analogy when "asshole" would suffice.
Indeed. But software zealots exhibit the same behavioral properties as normal zealots. "Normal zealots" is understood to be "religious zealots", because those behavioral properties are derived primarily from analyses of religious behavior.
Worship, at the end of the day, has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
Right. Replacing one form of blind adherence with another is not an improvement.
There are people who have no blind adherence to anything. It is possible, and we need more of them. That isn't something IFLS can help with.
Seems to me that a lot of the point of 'cheering science' is lost when you're posting inaccurate facts.
Can you even call it science any more?
If the cheerleaders were sleeping with the fans and spreading venereal disease your analogy would be nearly perfect.
This is how What the Bleep, Dr. Oz, and all manner of pseudoscience subverts actual science.
Fairweather friends like that make it more difficult because they're repeating a meme or sort of cargo cult understanding of how reality works.
Personal favourite: http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=math.
Lol-cats among other things teach public why veterinary medicine is worth the fuss. It's because cats are so cute!
Are there any good articles that talk about this practice? Seems like that could be interesting...
http://qz.com/74937/how-to-become-internet-famous-without-ev...
Is it the tone that gets to you, the underlying message, or the overly idealistic picture it paints?