Danny ChaiBobby brings up an interesting point. Some criticize people who accept orthodox views willy nilly without truly examining them. This is legitimate. Furthermore, we should approach everything with humility, never thinking that we have a complete grasp of the truth, since even what is seen as orthodox has changed through the years. Also true.
My question is (which I’ve asked many times before), how come people don’t apply these same standards to science? The same modern society that embraces pluralism seems to treat science as an ultimate truth. But while what’s considered orthodox in Christianity has changed a bit through the years, what’s considered scientific truth has changed relatively drastically.
We see it all the time in like medicine. For years, they say hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women is good. Now they say whoops, it’s actually bad. The exact opposite. Everyone says sun exposure is bad for you. Now some doctors think there’s a national Vitamin-D deficiency problem because people don’t get enough sun. I’m not making this up.
More fundamentally, looking at something like the concept of gravity, Aristotle has a theory of gravity. It’s completely replaced with Newton’s theories of gravity. Which are completely replaced by Einstein’s theories. Each scientific theory that came before was shown to be completely wrong, thoroughly replaced. That’s the nature of scientific progress. The big breakthroughs are revolutionary, not incremental. They replace and invalidate old theories, instead of building on them.
That being the case, why does society blindly trust in the current scientific theories while questioning orthodoxy? Shouldn’t society approach science with at least as much hesitation and humility as it would religious orthodoxy? I dunno, I just firmly believe that modern society is wholly logically inconsistent, and most people haven’t thought about things enough to realize this. But that’s just my opinion.