Jack D Capehart's blog

Quote Me

Oxymoron: A Scientist Hypocrite

Quantum Mechanics describes the butterflies that cause the storms we call reality.

God’s will (AKA fate) is whatever just happened.

Catma is better than dogma!  (What is Catma - It doesn't matter)

Religion depends far too heavily on the belief that life is something special.

The difference between religion and science:

     It is possible to disprove scientific theories but impossible to disprove religious dogma.

Religious people are not required to believe scientific theories.

    Scientists strive to disprove them.

    They are our best description of reality.

Our environment is intelligent. After all, it designed life.

I’m sorry. My Karma ran over your dogma.

THEORIES AND BELIEFS

Let me start this article with a little conundrum or brain-teaser which I devised:

Theories are the beliefs of science and scientists continually strive to disprove them.
Beliefs are the theories of religion and religious leaders never try to disprove them.

How these two lines affect you will depend on your nature/nurture (your DNA or your environment during your lifetime) and most certainly on the meaning you give to the words.  Dictionaries provide us with a "common ground" of meanings for words and should be used much more frequently when composing what we want to say as opposed to only using them for interpretation.  I used the dictionary in composing the two lines above.  Here is what I read:

Belief:
              1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.
              2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.
              3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.
Theory:
              1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
              2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory.
              3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics.
              4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather than theory.
              5. A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.
              6. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.
  The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

My main motivation for composing this article is to point out that most people assume the very last definition for "theory" (6.) to be the only one, but in all of the sciences the first definition is always used (1.).