re: What do you think it means to believe in science?

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then i guess you don't really believe in anything

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I've never been called a nihilist before.

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Which is why science does not invalidate religion.

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But it can disprove claims religion makes about the physical universe.

The left: Women are the equal of men in every way! Why do you hate science!?!???! Global warming motherfricker!

I believe in science as an open and neverending method of inquiry and not as a secular religion presided over by media annointed clerics.

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How many genders are there?

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Depends on if you prescribe to the concept of gender being a social definition, a biological one (physical characteristics), a biological one (reproductive characteristics), a neurological one, etc.

Most people here likely prescribe to the reproductive interpretation, in which case they'll likely answer 2. This is regardless if the individual is capable of actually engaging in the act of reproduction (due to infertility, etc).

The other physical side, then you would look at hermaphrodites (now referred to as intersex) as at least a third position in the gender system. These individuals can range from outwardly appearing as precisely one or the other, to having mixed attributes from the two sides (female and male).

Getting into the social and neurological premise is way more daunting. Gender becomes less of physical presence and more mental state. This would be worth an entire thread on its own, but not one in a politically charge location like this.

it means rejecting science you don't believe in and attempting to marginalize it as a non-science

like evolutionary psychology

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I'd wager there's a pretty large percentage of people who claim to be all about science but lack the intellectual capacity to understand any of it and just go by whatever Bill Nye tells them. That is where the belief aspect comes into play.

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well you can get philosophical about it

science has biases b/c it's created by man. the bias can be political or personal (ensuring experiments work or interpreting the data to reveal a novel conclusion to get career advancement and publicity/more funding)

the verification process can use its own biases to curtail good research or promote bad research

so there is a bit of appeal to authority, even in science, and that requires faith

pure, objective science is rare these days b/c of the personal biases and funding biases

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Science relies on belief more than facts. Science is a form of religion. Most people accept science based on faith not facts.

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ah you see the problem with your comment is that science, at least good science, is replicatable

theories or functional analyses that can be replicated are much more legitimate than postulations without data

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ah you see the problem with your comment is that science, at least good science, is replicatable

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wrong, that is a fallacy. Written science is made to look replicable. In many cases it is not replicable nor does it need to be to be good science. Just think about null results. The idea is that most scientist will only publish those results that show significant results because that is what scientific journals want. There is not many journals for null results for experiments that did not produce the expected result.

There are instances when you can replicate the methods exactly on a specific experiment and not get the same result, a null result. It is impossible to account for every variation in an experiment. In many cases those types of results are not accepted or even published. Why is that? Because science has a vested interest in not publishing null results because you want to be discovering and getting funding.

Science is a socially accepted phenomenon. Science relies upon peer pressure for its results to be accepted. 99.9% of the public that accept a scientific theory do so on faith, not because they tested the issue for themselves. Science has priest that have knowledge no one else does. They make their pronouncements that most us cannot understand. The only difference between religion and science is that science has a methodology that allows for one to actually test your theory, so the priest of science has a method that is not just based on faith. To this point, there is no test to finding a deity, so religion must be accepted on blind faith. But you must understand and view science as a social phenomenon that is subject to the same biases as any religion or political system.