Nope. Scientific method can only operate on things that are measurable.
I get you now. I am not into science. I am into engineering. I make stuff, who cares whether it can be made again, or reproduced?
Surely, the same software does the same functions on the same machines, otherwise it would be useless, but I do not care whether the functions change with the next upgrade.
I am not into measuring stuff as well, although many software engineers are (statistics). Maybe in monetized programs it makes a bigger difference, but I am not very good at marketing.
Why would you want to measure stuff, other than for the sake of market research?
and can be repeated by others following the instructions
I thought that you were against following instructions. Catholicism is good at issuing instructions for others to follow; I thought you were against it.
I know some of the principles of scientific method, they are just not appealing to me.
It does not do anything with that which it cannot measure.
I thought sociology was dealing with stuff that cannot be measured or repeated, but maybe sociology is not science.
Religion works off of faith, and often off of certainty it is right. The key is faith. This is also sometimes called belief. Belief has nothing to do with science.
Religion works off of hypotheses (what you call faith), like science does. It's the same thing. A large portion of religion is not in the business of verifying these hypotheses, though. Yet religion evolved during the years. Sikhism was created as an attempt to propose a viable alternative to Islam. To my knowledge before Guru Gobind nobody thought that a book could be perceived as a living personal guru. It was merely a variation of older models of worshipping effigies and stones, yet worshipping a book this time around was Gobind's innovation.
Still, for people who do not like Sikhism there is Baha'i, which is another proposition of a viable Islam's alternative.
Religion is not in the business of proving things, but creating social norms that are deemed to be useful in given circumstances. Religion is engineering, not science. iPhone was made by engineers, not scientists. iPhone doesn't prove things.
Now there are those that claim to be scientists, or use the label science to justify something they want to push onto others who actually are NOT practicing the scientific method.
I think that Hare Krishna people do this. They produce unverified stuff and claim it to be science. Still, this is only their peculiarity. Not all religion is like that.
The scientific method is quite simple.
Too simple for me. It just provides proofs and explanations. Uninteresting for me.
That ultimately is one of the reasons the scientific method was created.
I agree with you on that, yet science does not create anything. Science is not socially useful. It is just a curiosity.
If you then reject the ability for people to challenge or ask questions then you turn it into bias and it is no longer scientific.
So you probably point your finger at religions that have this flaw. Yet find a religion that does it. Islam evolved into Sikhism, Sufism, Baha'i, Ahmadiyya and stuff. Creating such religions counts as asking questions and challenging prior assumptions.
I do understand why you would think this though. Today there is a vast amount of "scientific", "scientifically", etc crap coming out every day that is not science at all.
I am aware of the confusion that some people create between science and homeopathy. I am not one of them. I am not one of them. I do not care whether Android smartphones are scientific or not. I just know how to use them.
I do not care whether Guru Granth Sahib can be proven to be God, I care about the community it helped to create, and how it helped to create an even more modern religion, Ravidasia.
Show me a time when rejecting a particular scientific hypothesis or two led to creation of a viable social movement.
True scientists never stop questioning even their own findings.
Unfortunately very few religious people do that. The new religions I enumerated in the paragraphs above were usually being created by questioning findings of other people, never one's own. I think such position is not honest, and is a major flaw of religion.
I think that some Christian challenge their previous findings, but seldom to the point of leaving Christianity, or wanting to found a new religion. Even the people who do create new religions do not necessarily question their own prior claims.
I heard once that Gerald Gardner would leave empty pages in their Book of Shadows in case they want to refine their own knowledge later, but I don't know whether people such as Gerald, Anton LaVey, Aleister Crowley, Helena Blavatsky, were researchers known for taking back their own word when confronted with new information.
You have found a flaw in religion. Now what? Religion cannot be replaced with science, until at least you find a science that builds community centres like gurudwaras and mosques.
Yet for every good thing you show there are invariably even bad things that happen.
You are probably concerned that it is very difficult to create a good quality religion.
Very few smartphones actually explode, and even when they do, they do not cause great harm.
Very few cars kill people, and more often than not cars help somebody.
Religions create much separation. They create plenty of good within their own community, but they are not very good at interacting with other groups.
One religion is to another what Cartesian is to polar coordinate system. They are the same, but translating between them is not trivial.
I don't like group think as it leads to an us vs them situation.
I don't like group think as it leads to an us vs them situation.
One can only do so much without consensus.
Even bitcoin cannot work without consensus, and there is hardly anything more scientific than that.
I still don't know why you think comparing religion to bitcoin is like comparing apples to oranges.
Both religion and bitcoin constitute a protocol that people use to communicate with each other.
Eventually you can work on creating an exchange process that moves value from one protocol to another (between two religions or two blockchains), but it is not trivial.
I guess anarchists work with the least amount of consensus possible.
They agree on the venue they want to meet at, but each has their own individual goals, that are far removed from religion and group thinking.
Still, I am not sure which social structure can create more: everybody being totally individual, yet still meeting at the same venue, or everybody working at the same goal, and is there a difference.
I used to compare the Sikh Langar and anarchist Food Not Bombs. They all work on the same principle and are hardly distinguishable from each other.
I would like either group to create more stuff, as opposed to just engage in music and games. (Both anarchists and Sikhs do that). I want to see whether religion or anarchism creates better software, better books and stuff; whatever a particular community wants to participate in.
Anarchism is a viable alternative to religion, but comparing religion to science is comparing apples to oranges.
I've been programming since 1982. It definitely uses science. It does not operate from ambiguous made up commands and syntax that might be true just because people believe it.
Same is true of engineering. Science (the true meaning) and Engineering are implicitly linked together.
You won't engineer anything using religion. :)
Counting is measuring. Why do you need numbers?
Math is measuring.
Speed limit is measuring.
Weight is measuring.
Height is measuring.
Distance is measuring.
Why would we want to do any of those things?
Money is basically a proxy to represent someones time. It is a universal exchange tool used for people to exchange tokens of time. Without money you might have a farm and need my help. You say "Hey, if you help me for a day on my farm and I'll give you 3 chickens". It is an exchange of my time (a day) for 3 chickens. Money simply provides a universal exchange tool for converting between all other forms of goods. I can exchange time for money, and use it to get whatever I can exchange for an amount of my time proxy. I could thus maybe buy 1 chicken, some bread, and some vegetables instead of simply having to settle for 3 chickens.
So money in a sense is a measure of a person's time. That's about it. :)
Yet we measure vast amounts of things. You certainly cannot do any form of engineering, or programming without it.
In programming we measure things in bits.
Without measurements we end up basically with one, a couple, a few, some, a lot, etc. It becomes very ambiguous and subjective.