Svejk, the reason people are being condescending is (as far as I can tell) that you came in championing inductive reasoning out of the blue, implying that nobody in the thread had used it. I don't see anyone in here dogmatically accepting anything. The first few posts may not have delved in-depth into the reasons for all the homeopathy-bashing, but that doesn't meant they didn't have reasons, just that it would have been overly pedantic and unnecessary to the conversation to discuss them.

Also, you may have gotten a lot of -frags for #17 because of what seems like a misinterpretation of scientific principles. OF COURSE people thought Newton was correct. For macroscopic systems, HE IS. When scientists with access to new technology, data and theories showed that he was incorrect for microscopic systems, people acknowledged that science was advancing and accepted the new explanations. Similarly, if a large body of medical evidence emerges that shows homeopathy to be wildly effective, public opinion will quickly change on the subject.

edit for argumentation principles: It is far more effective to ask a probing question and listen for the answer (i.e. use the Socratic method) than to begin an argument by making a statement or a paragraph.

I feel there has been a misunderstanding and I will try and clear up what I mean.
I feel no animosity to people on this thread. At all.

It is a personal peeve of mine when people either reject things because it is incompatible with their model of the world, even when there is good evidence for it. Or looking down on people who unquestionably accept something, when they just unquestioningly accept the counterargument without looking more deeply at the argument.
This may not have been the case, and if I misinterpreted you, I apologise.

I recognise that homeopathy violates a lot of scientific theories. That on its own is not enough to discredit it. It is the large body of evidence that suggests that it is ineffective that does the work.

I had no intention to start an argument, merely to state my opinion based on my interpretation of the thread. I apologise if I have offended anyone with what I have said or how I said it. This is not meant as a personal attack on anyone, rather a general point about reasoning.

For your own benefit, try to begin future discussions like this by asking people what led them to believe something, rather than making blanket statements up front.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWE1tH93G9U

"equivalent of taking 1 grain of rice, crushing into a powder and dissolving it in a sphere of water the size of the solar system"
No science can back up homeopathy. Avogadro would get mad! Every time you dilute a compound the chance of a single molecule appearing in a solution lessens.

I don't think you can dogmatically believe in science. It is not like religions, rather it has a group of people continuously working to explain and understand the natural world, not the spiritual. And scientific discoveries and facts are usually backed up by a whole bunch of work published in journals, and you can even follow their experiment on your own (if you have the resources) and see if you come to the sam conclusion.

I think your're confusing the term scientific theory here.

Newton wasn't wrong. All he did was attempt to describe the strengh of the graitational force. He made no attempt to describe how force arose.

Newtons equations are also a fantastic approximation for scales that we are familiar with. NASA got men to the moon using Newtons equations for gravity and motion. General Relativity only becomes necessary to describe phenomena on scales and strengths of gravitational fields that people had not yet conceived of.

And of course, when Einstein first stated that the speed of light is the same no matter what reference frame you are in and described the consequences of this assumption, people were skeptical. It described a universe that at first glance, we did not appear to live in. Eventually however, experiment proved his predictions correct and those who were skeptical of the theory changed their minds in the face of evidence.

That is the difference between the scientific method, and complete made up bullshit like homeopathy.

double

I was waiting for the part of the documentary where the journalist switched the mother's medicine with equivalently sized capsules containing only sucrose and fructose. Of course the mother doesn't know that they have been switched, so she thinks she still giving homeopathic remedies to her child and herself.

The journalist checks in a few later and notices that the child isn't home. Upon further inquiry, the mother reveals that her son had in fact died in the intervening times between visits. The journalist begins to consoles the mother in a her best attempt to conceal her own guilt. However, before any condolences can be uttered, the mother continues to say that her son had died in a car accident.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nothing beats this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNFBWyIAOE4&hl=en-GB&gl=AU

You're honestly an asshole for thinking this...