So pre-science did nothing exist?
We've believed some right fruity nonsense down through time. It's nothing new. The problem we have today I think is a combination of power, prestige, politics, and money. You have entire institutions and swathes of people with careers that rest on certain things remaining 'true'.. they will refuse to budge and concede something might be in error because if they do then their career/institution might no longer receive funding.
You can see across several disciplines now, two mentioned here already, that there are severe problems with the prevailing paradigm. Clearly something has been overlooked or we've made a wrong turn somewhere. But they simply will not let go. They hide behind 'I'm a scientist and therefore I
always care about truth', but in reality money is still subconsciously more important and they'll perform these gymnastics to avoid confronting things.
With biology and pharmaceuticals, you have a trillion dollar industry at stake. That kind of enterprise breeds tremendous power and influence. If someone proved tomorrow that viruses don't exist and that actually all we need to do is take some vitamins or something, then that industry would evaporate overnight. The people who bankroll that industry also have a vested interest in not letting that happen too.
I hear you with the dark matter stuff. I've thought that before also... but I don't know it doesn't exist simply because I can't measure it. It might exist. It might not. COVID might be a virus. You don't know it isn't.
You're right, I don't
know. I can't prove/disprove it either way any more than you or anyone else. Which again is awfully convenient because it means only those with the technology can, which itself is awfully reminiscent of priests in the dark ages having a monopoly on theology and the peasants being unable to prove/disprove anything.
At the end of the day you have to weigh it up yourself. History is replete with examples of 'consensus' that turned out to be manifest rubbish, and it was clung to by authorities until it was absolutely impossible to deny any more. Personally I've seen enough contemporary examples of corruption and influence to know that we should question absolutely everything. A trillion dollar industry is a magnet for corruption.
Humans don't know everything.
Exactly. I think this trips people up though, because we think we escaped the ludicrousness of the dark ages by embracing science but unfortunately our psychology didn't change all that much. We're still making the same mistakes as we did before, only now we have technology to refine our delusions with even more certainty.
We've made progress, but we've stagnated again.
