"You're a hypocrite, and the worst kind, because you actively tear down people whose theories do not match yours even as you know you have nothing to back up your Natural Rights mumbo-jumbo."

To be fair Science gets more publicity and education to the general public than Philosophy ever has.

Science permeates pop-culture. And a basic science education is required at all educational levels after preschool.

Science TV shows abound. Some even do more than talk about the findings but go into depth about the scientific method.

Philosophy has bupkis. Maybe one Jonathan Miller series on PBS some 35 years ago. It is nowhere in pop-culture ( despite the desperate efforts to sell books like "The Philosophy of Harry Potter." ) And it is nowhere in the educational system unless one actively searches ( and for most thats after HS. )

Further the radically different natures of the disciplines makes it easier to be self-educated about Science.

Science is basically a huge cage-match for competing theories. There is a victor and often the corpses of several vanquished foes. So its quite easy to google "gravity" and see the surviving theory. Do the same for "solar system" and you might find the geocentric model discussed in passing as a debunked theory. But the search will lead to a single prevailing theory.

The exception of course is young theories like String Theory that are still duking it out with their opponents. In these few cases there are multiple conflicting viable theories; and it would be a misreading to assume that trash-talk by the advocate of one constitutes a refutation of the other. But this is rare enough because the cage-match system builds consensus around ( mostly ) just one viable theory left standing.

Philosophy is nothing like this at all. "Debunking" is rare for anything that has achieved the status of a theory or school of thought. Some ideas have been relegated to the dustbin ( like St. Anselm's Ontological Argument [ refuted by Kant.] ) But the old dinosaur theories hold on tenaciously. Sometimes the fall into disuse, but that's not the same as going extinct.

Often a good teacher in a survey course will play "gotcha" just to make this point. He may spend one day promoting the history and basic arguments for one side; leaving all the freshmen absolutely convinced of its certainty. And then the following day he advances the mutually incompatible ( but no less viable ) theories opposing it; thus dashing their hopes.

This is a good basic education in how these things work and it disabuses folks of notions that certainty is THAT easy in philosophy. But since there is NO popularization on the Telly, no education for schoolchildren and no requirement that majors in other divisions MUST take a survey course ( at least in my experience ) this means that the only way to encounter this is through a deliberate effort.

The theories and approaches of Philosophy largely exist in an area where debunking just doesn't occur. They get tweaked, they evolve and they remain viable. This makes perfunctory research impossible. The only way to comprehend what rival theories remain viable ( and any given topic often has many ) is by slogging through it all.

It might help to get a survey text, or visit an online syllabus or encyclopedia offered by an accredited college. Because this is basically what defines viability.

Is it still taught as viable? Are doctoral dissertations still being accepted which presume it is viable. Can a doctoral candidate who has successfully made a major contribution to a theory be able to teach it elsewhere?

This is easy enough to answer if its Science. Anyone advancing the geocentric solar system will be laughed out of any accredited college. This will occur at the undergrad level where they will be disabused of their illiteracy in the topic and led towards the relevant evidence debunking it.

This also holds for the few thoroughly refuted arguments within Philosophy. But the only way to not mistake trash-talk for a thorough debunking is to be conversant. Although one can start by seeing whether advocates for a theory one disagrees with are still being afforded doctorates, careers and esteem from their academic peers.

Philosophical theories, even the most "mumbo jumbo" ones are hardy little bastards. If nobody can kill the Hegelian Dialectic, then there's not much hope of seeing others give up the ghost.

As for refutation outside of academia by the general public. They can trash-talk Utilitarianism all they want. But even if they chose to declare it dead, any onlooker could go to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or syllabi from Hanover, Kent State, Duke and find it very much alive. They could even go to Wikipedia and see just who was advancing it in the modern era. And in all of these places they would also find many time-tested rivals of this concept are also thriving as well.

And ultimately this is what matters. That the internet will defeat the notion that trash-talk is certainty just as much as a Philosophy 101 course will.

Once certainty and the notion of cage-match eliminations are removed, everyone can calm down and examine the mutually incompatible yet viable theories for themselves. There is much to be learned in the arguments for and against. But there is nothing to be gained by turning a blind eye to productive avenues of inquiry in the search for certainty.

In some ways I prefer the order of Science to the neverending arguments of Philosophy which never seem to produce anything but more unanswered questions. Maybe that's just something of the Aspie in me. :)

Perhaps the only thing that Philosophy does in the long-run is produce coherence within a line of argument. And the only thing it seems to debunk is the internally inconsistent argument.

Dante