Science is all about religion?

[swansont]

Surely, if anyone, it is DoG who is using the fallacy. I cited Hawking and Kaku as people physics-believers would class as physicists, and I pointed to their books as evidence that they believe in the possibility of time travel. I thought DoG was arguing that they were not 'true physicists'; but he has never actually answered that point, so it may be that he does accept them as true physicists, but is merely arguing that they do not believe in 'fantasy time travel' but only in 'true time travel'. It looks like my opponents here have created the new 'true time travel' logical fallacy, whereby people argue that they only believe in the true version of nonsensical idea and not the fictitious type, without defining what the true version entails.

 

I do appreciate that you are much more tolerant of views that contradict your own beliefs than most people, but I do not think you are moderating in an even handed manner.

 

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Moderator Note

You have a thread where the specifics of time travel have been discussed and that the time travel physics hasn't ruled out is NOT the Back-to-the-Future style of time travel. It is not a fallacy. You can try and demonstrate how closed timelike curves are impossible, but do it in that thread. This thread is about science being religion. You can't assume it's true to show that it's true.

 

Characterizing this as my belief is yet another fallacy.

[doG]

...but surely the point of physics should be to make the universe as simple as possible for ordinary people to understand, not so bizarrely abstruse that physics professors cannot understand it, and therefore need to be taught to sing from the same hymn sheet.

No, the point of physics is too understand nature regardless of how difficult is is too understand, not to reduce it's complexity so that people uneducated in the field can understand it.

 

Surely, if anyone, it is DoG who is using the fallacy. I cited Hawking and Kaku as people physics-believers would class as physicists, and I pointed to their books as evidence that they believe in the possibility of time travel.

Neither of these have stated that time travel is in fact possible and that they believe so on faith. They have hypothesized what would be required for time travel to be possible. For that matter you could claim that Einstein's traveling twin paradox is evidence that he believed in time travel too but it would not be in the same context as you use it. Taking such examples out of context to claim they represent your claim is a strawman fallacy.

[swansont]

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Moderator Note

Discussion on quarks moved to the appropriate thread http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/56734-an-alternative-to-quarks/
Keep discussion of that topic in that thread rather than hijacking this one