I'm an absurdist/cheerful (well maybe more sarcastic) nihilist as well!
"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

"Nah Donny, these men are nihilists, it's nothing to be afraid of." - Walter Sobchak

@danh2os
Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules???

? well that depends.
On a few things.

@atheist -- Not quite true. Almost all physics results from evidence. Certain areas of the discipline are based on conjecture derived from tenuous evidence and in some instances no evidence at all, but the greater body of the discipline is grounded in evidence and observation.

@Scoobs I've never seen anyone with the balls to take it so far as science being "100% faith based", at least not unless they were a theist parroting their indoctrination. So I give you points for that, despite 100% disagreeing with you. Well, 99.99%.

Science avoids certain things, for example, for the past century or so it has considered scientific discussion, much less formal study, of causal relationships to be taboo, and now those prejudices are breaking down because causality has been reduced down to (fairly simple) mathematical notation systems. So we are finally moving beyond the limitations of statistics and curve-fitting and I can now state with some confidence that it's possible in principle to build a self-aware general-purpose AI that can think counter-factually and morally and discuss its reasoning with humans.

But this doesn't mean science isn't still the best epistemology -- the best system for understanding and vetting supportable beliefs about reality with a minimum of cognitive bias. It just means that sometimes it discards certain avenues of inquiry until it really needs them. It's a self-limiting problem, over the long haul.

@Scoobs -- Spoken like a true philosopher or apologist. How can we be sure you're not a plant put here by Answers in Genesis? Perhaps a guru from some New Age cult, or a writer from Gaia? Of course I'm kidding, but you worded it in such a way that it makes science sound like woo very much like one finds in religion.

There is only one assumption made in the scientific method at its foundation and that is that the Universe obeys rules. That’s the only assumption. There is one corollary, and that is that those rules can be deduced by careful and orderly observation of the way the Universe works. It follows then that if the Universe obeys rules, the rules will be revealed by that behavior. Over a few hundred years of investigation and exploration we have found that the Universe does indeed follow a set of rules and that we were right about many of them.

Of course we are surprised from time to time, but not so much as to force the paradigm or cause any substantive change in that relationship between the assumption that the Universe must follow certain rules and the resulting descriptions and predictions stemming from that basic assumption that have shown us that the assumption was correct. Not circular reasoning like when an apologist uses on bible passage to support another bible passage. I realize that this is a gross simplification, but it doesn't give woo a chance to work its way into the mix and give a false sense of what science really is.

@Scoobs Dude ... come on. Seriously? What has religious faith ever invented, innovated, or corrected science on? Based on results alone, it's zero to 100 in favor of the scientific method. For example, what side of history was Christianity on in cosmology, first in the Biblical cosmology of a firmament resting on the foundations of the earth, then in the notion that celestial bodies revolve around earth?

Beyond that ... examining evidence and drawing conclusions vs making presuppositions and cherry-picking supporting evidence -- it's not even a contest. Is the examination of evidence and the drawing of conclusions from it infallible and perfect? No. Is it way, WAY better? Obviously.

So there's your (very) "tangible" connection to science as a truth-finding exercise. If you can't see it then I can't help you further than that.

@mordant -- Hear..! Hear..!