If you allow me to share my scattered thoughts here:
(...) a lot of people don't really understand what science is about. It is important to understand that science is our attempt to describe every aspect of reality that you can verify. It's not some isolated thing that people do for the lols, and which is only concerned with one part of reality.
I agree that this happens. I think that this misconception is an unfortunate popular idea of what is science. e.g. Insofar as you through trial and error get a recipe just right, or make small tweaks in the seasoning to further perfect it, you are being as scientific as it gets, towards cooking in this case. Perhaps these prejudices against and misconceptions of science are a reaction of the loose, misuse of the word by some other people — indeed I would say "science" is a loaded word, in the sense that its incidental connotation gets in the way of what it truly is. I would go as far as saying that there are people out there that "use" "science" to fill the religion blank. I will not be able to articulate this quite as well as I would like to but here I am not talking about say, verifying your hypotheses as you go and having a per se "scientific" approach towards solving the matters in life but rather the far too prodigal use of "this is SCIENCE, so I am right and you are wrong!!" by some who think (in which case the science in question had not been verified by them but rather just appeared in some arguably credible source and in the hypothetical situation was just embraced to fit their point of view — had it not, it would have been overlooked) — this is all quite subtle, but I trust the readers to make up for the blanks I leave.
There are also some who are not fond of breaking down and explaining (some) things. I do agree that emotionless analysis does indeed destroy any sort of fun or mystical aspect of the given object, and we do want to have our fun, however I think it is one's own duty to resolve this philosophical conflict for unfortunately we are not children being overlooked by an all-caring father and there are things that for the sake of our survival and well-being, must be broken down and understood — indeed, it is even easier than that: one doesn't even have to directly participate in the dissection of the objects they hold dear to enjoy technological progress! —; it is just like being against research on medicine because it is intervening on the natural way of things, which is something I can imagine having happened in the past and evidently has its present day analogues. Also tangentially related there are the ones who assert "[insert psychoactive plant] is good because it is natural, [insert synthetic drug] is bad because it is man-made!".
On the "TO YOU" aspect of the title question, while I, shortly said, "approve of science" I have personally never been MUCH interested in the natural sciences, my curiosity having always been more directed towards the eidetic. Which brings me to (at the risk of making a slight derail):
(...) I see both science and spirituality as the study of the natural world -- philosophy and spirituality, to me, is the investigation of aspects of life which are not measurable and quantifiable, such as our subjective experience of things. Science seems to deal with more simple, objective metrics like mass, velocity, pressure, etc.
Which are my thoughts exactly on the matter. I however don't believe that these things (objects of the interest of philosophy and spirituality) are
inherently[\I] unmeasurable (I know it might be that you didn't intend to imply that; I am not nitpicking here, just enjoying the opportunity to express my thoughts on the matter), but rather as [I now see that] you said, far too complex and intricate for our thick, blunt (modern) tools. Incidentally, additionally, the objects of our interest in philosophy often escape our own words[\I]. So the very act of translating the results of our investigations back into the common language we all share, as well as the ability to effectively communicate — both the expressing one's own ideas in a fashion their interlocutors understand and in turn listening and understanding the other's ideas — are two tasks of their own, to which one could dedicate their whole life in perfecting, something which does not afflict natural sciences, and thus is (IMO) a major paradigm here.
So for a proper response to the OP:
- What purpose does science have in your worldview?
The progress of society, the betterment of life, satisfying curiosity;
- How does scientific knowledge affect your spiritual or philosophical beliefs?
I make TheAppleCore's words mine;
- Do you think the world would be better off without science? Why?
I don't, I am thankful for science. And further I would even have the audacity to say that it is unfair to be against science now that we live comfortably; the first cavemen that made spears and learned how to make food from plants were scientists and it would not have been easy to be against that back then.
