Actually I'm pointing out that they are entirely different, the scientific community is a very small and insulated group who's opinions can vary widely from the wisdom of the masses and scientific truth.
All right. So the scientific community – the comunity of scientists – has just “opinions” about science, while the masses poses wisdom and scientific truth.
Let us see how that works in practice. First, scientific truth are not innate, or divinely revealed. They are the product of scientific research and then published by scientists. So the “Scientific truths” publishing scientists do not know what they have published – unlike the masses – and hence have just opinions.
One can wonder how these masses acquire these scientific truths – unknown and/ or not understood by scientists. When did the masses go to chemistry labs for performing chemistry experiments? When did the masses dissect rabbits and sea slugs and peaked through microscopes for understanding the structure of different tissues? When did the masses stain chromosomes for elucidating the meiotic cell division? Luckily we have the masses for giving us all that knowledge, because obviously we can’t count on the scientific community.
I agree entirely; the scientific method does not call for ending debate on a theory, it calls for being open to correction based on new evidence
But about only 16 secs in "[] the book didn't have that much evidence, but within 10-15 years the scientific debate was over'
i.e. clearly the method and the community are often at odds with each other
Again, scientists not knowing how science works.
Imagine that. It will come as a shock that on some subjects the evidence can be so compelling that indeed the debate is over.
• No scientist doubts the sphericity of the Earth or the heliocentric model
• No scientist doubts the existence of atoms
• No scientist doubts that DNA is the carrier of genetic information (I still have an old botany book where the proteins on the chromosomes are seen as carriers of the genetic information).
• No scientist doubts the action of plate tectonics.
These debates are over. And some were very intense.
Who ever wants to cast a doubt on any of these will need very, very compelling arguments.
So ToE is more popular among atheists? I'd never have guessed!
The part you replied to did not say “theists or deists”. It said “fundamentalist Christians and conservative republicans”. And news flash: there are religious people that aren’t fundamentalist Christians. All 1.3 billion Roman Catholics, for starters. Not to speak of the many more liberal Christian denominations, 1 billion hindus, the jews, the 1 billion muslims and so on. All non atheists and non fundamentalist Christians. Go figure.