4. EVIDENCE- VS. NON EVIDENCE-BASED KNOWLEDGE.
While science is the quintessential evidence-based system of knowledge, other systems of understanding have been present throughout history and still are part of the human experience. The most well known and pervasive of these systems is what is widely known as religion. While it is not possible to picture all religions with the same stroke, for this discussion I am going to focus on the three major monotheistic religions, namely, christianism, islam and judaism. It is not the objective of this post to discuss any of them in any detail, but only to name them as common examples of a faith-based system of understanding. I.e., a knowledge system that is not subject to the need for scientific proof of the principles in which they are based or the knowledge that they propose.

On the origin of faith and religious belief. In his book "Breaking the Spell", Sam Harris discusses the notion of an evolutionary link between humanity and the development of faith. I would like to go an step further and propose that faith is inherent to the evolutionary development of human-like intelligence. In essence, I submit that any form of intelligence resembling ours, developed by regular evolutionary mechanisms and conferring a survival advantage to the corresponding species would result in the search of supernatural beings, in response to a lack of mechanistic answers for the most basic questions, the development of religions and the development of faith as the factor to hold it together. What I propose is that if we ever were to encounter an extraterrestrial civilation of the kind that we could communicate with, that was able to develop tools and a scientific knowledge about their world, this civilization would be or would have been at a certain stage in its development, religious. The rationale for this assertion is simple, but in my opinion, very powerful. The evolutionary development of intelligence, naturally selected for the survival advantage conferred to its bearers, would consistently result in living entities with larger capacity for asking questions about nature and the universe, than the capacity to answer them. Any intelligent species with a capacity of comunication, learning and teaching would probably be unsatisfied by the lack of answers that would characterize their early development. The mechanistic approach that such intelligence would apply to explain the characteristics of its environment would quickly find extraordinary causes for extraordinary events, such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, death, the regular cycles of their star, etc. This would most likely result in the development of deities, often based on their star, which with time and further sophistication would result in the development of institutionalized religions. It is also possible, that a civilization that would have achieved the scientific understanding necessary for interstelar travel, would by then had majoritarily rejected the idea of a god.

3. HYPOTHESES, LAWS AND THEORIES.
In science, we commonly use terms like hypothesis, laws and theories. While these terms have very concrete meanings in science, they are often used in regular conversation with a completely different meaning. This has often led to misunderstandings about the validity of some of our most important scientific work. For example, in normal conversation we tend to use the word "theory" to imply a "hunch" or a "guess" about something, without necessarily too much evidence backing it up. We may hear something like "My theory is that he worked until late, got tired and forgot about our dinner engagement". The lay use of the word theory often leads non scientists to quickly dismiss important scientific theories on the grounds that "hey, it's just a theory, it's not a fact". A clear and repeated example of this is the scientific theory of evolution, often bashed by non scientists using this very argument. There may be other theories equally valid as well". So, what is a scientific theory?
The goal of this post is to clarify, in the simplest possible way the most common terminology used in science: observation, fact, hypothesis, law, theory.

The meaning of these terms goes to the very core of how science operates. Let's use a very simple example. Let's imagine that your dog exhibits from time to time typical inflammation symptoms (redness, heat, pain, swelling) in the chest and abdominal area.

2. A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY.
In a very broad sense, we can consider that an early form of science has been part of the human adventure since the dawn of times. As human beings started to develop the capacity for asking questions about themselves and their environment, as soon as they felt curious and started to explore nature, they must have started to produce answers and explore the validity of those answers based on the results they produced. It was not, however, until the XVIII century that science developed based on the basic principles that we still apply today.

1. JUSTIFICATION AND INTRODUCTION.
The impetus for this blog is the realization that, even in developed countries, despite all the scientific advances of the last 100 + years, much of the understanding about ourselves, the world that we live in and our place in the universe is based on ancient myths, superstition, pseudoscience, and a general lack of understanding about what science is and how it operates.

The goal of this site is to serve as a forum for discussion, sharing of scientific information, learning about how we know what we know, and the advance of reason.
Welcome all to Secular per Secula...Secolurum.