Don't worry: Nothing bad below (at least not that I know of!). It is not my intention to argue against your position, but just to state more clearly my own. My earlier answer to you was breezy, because I didn't perceive that you were all that serious. I thought you were just teasing. I see now that you are quite serious and passionate. I also believe, from previous posts of yours, that you know a thing or two about splitting atoms.
Like I said, I try to stay out of these debates. But here I am, dancing on the toilet rim, trying to maintain footing. I have strained some relationships (my sister being one) by addressing certain inconsistencies that many dogmatic (yes I said that) physicists and mathematicians seem to ignore, or seem oblivious to. It could be the hidden flaw in Calculus that makes many take an apparent 'leap of faith'. Some think we understand all that we need to and on the other end, some think/believe we don't know squat (that would be me). I have spent a lifetime learning just so that I can feel ignorant. Hmmm, nouf said.
I grant you, it is true that we physicists sometimes seem to ignore inconsistencies. Well, perhaps we don't really
ignore them, but we get used to them. We keep them in the back of our mind for when a more complete picture (that could explain the inconsistency) starts to emerge. In the meantime, we get on about our lives, using what we can from our best current theories to learn more about the universe, learning new things that are consistent with current understanding, but all the while trying to
disprove the current theories!
(I'm reasonably confident that Dennis understands what I mean, but if that sounds nonsensical to anyone reading this, I am using shorthand to refer to something like Popperian falsifiability.)
Something like this:
There is a physics joke about the stages of learning quantum mechanics:
(1) You don’t know what it means, you don’t know how to calculate anything, and it doesn’t bother you.
(2) You don’t know what it means, you don’t know how to calculate anything, and it bothers you.
(3) You don’t know what it means, you know how to calculate things, and it bothers you.
(4) You don’t know what it means, you know how to calculate things, and it doesn’t bother you.
You also wrote:
Some think we understand all that we need to and on the other end, some think/believe we don't know squat (that would be me).
Those certainly seem to be the extremes! But I don't think I know anyone on these extremes (unless I take your self-description at face value, and I kinda doubt that fits, and I mean that as a compliment). Certainly, no physicist thinks that we understand all that we need to: Physicists work really hard, dedicate their entire lives, struggle constantly, just to try to learn a little more than we know now. Of course none of them think we understand all there is to know! (Plus, the realization that it appears that we cannot account for 96% of the universe should sure keep one humble!
) On the other hand, just because we don't know
everything doesn't mean that we don't know
anything.
You mentioned dogma: Yes, dogmatic belief in a theory is inimical to learning. However, there is also a dogma in rejecting what observations tell us about the universe merely because the implications bother us. Would that we fall into neither dogmatic trap.
