Starboy

LOL DD, now you are just messin with me. Good night.

Doubting Didymus

Starboy, in case you missed it I am SIMPLIFYING.

Just why exactly is your analogy of one parent swinging one child more accurate than my analogy of swinging multiple children at once? If we take the analogy to a more accurate level, we are looking at a single parent with nine arms, all at different lengths, with children of various sizes, weights and molecular structures spinning in zero gravity. And this still wouldn't be completely accurate.

You seem to want to discredit me based on my lack of physical and astronomical knowledge. I hate to break the news, but this discussion is not about either. We should be talking about the truth or otherwise of science.

I think that the heliocentric theory is true, and not just 'workable', in that the sun and planets are actually out there and behave as they are theorised to behave. You have yet to elucidate your reasons for suggesting that this does not constitute truth.

Doubting Didymus

Good night, starboy.

galiel

The "truth"?! You can't HANDLE the "truth"!!!

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

Science is not about proving anything or finding "The Truth". Science is pragmatic, not dogmatic.

Science is fundamentally concerned with finding workable models of universal principles.

The scientific method is the best, most reliable and most USEFUL tool to date to increase our understanding of, and ability to improve, our life experience. Faith may help some people deal with misery. Science offers tools to eliminate it.

Science focuses on what works, what "is", not on what "should" be. That is why any and all scientific understanding is amenable to correction and even reversal upon reliable contradictory evidence--even the most fundamental of principles. That is the fundamental difference between science and faith. Science makes no claim to know "The Truth". Science is a purely pragmatic tool.

However, since science is a pragmatic tool and not a sophist exercise or abstract word-game, it has great utility in the real world.

Whether or not you claim that the "truth" is that the planets orbit the sun, we can use that knowledge to carefully calculate slingshotting spacecraft around them. And the trajectories are the same, no matter the faith of the astronaut.

Even though we don't know "what" gravity is, the empirical evidence of its existence allows us to rely on it each and every second we live on the Earth.

Science found what *actually* cured and then virtually eradicated bubonic plague and polio and smallpox, rather than the eons of prayer and superstitious practices that did not.

Science works. Reliably. Given identical circumstances and conditions, the same process works the same way each time. Science is not perfect in its realworld applications, because we do not have perfect control over the environmental variables within which we operate.

But science works well enough, far better than faith, and what doesn't work is quickly discarded or replaced by what does. Science gets progressively better, more complete and more useful. Since science is not concerned with discovering "truth" or "perfection", its eternal incompleteness is not a problem.

You can run around in rhetorical circles until you are blue in the face, you can "prove" philosophically that the world is flat and the sky is green. That may be a lot of fun, but it doesn't change anything. Thousands of years of faith and philosophy did not cure disease, improve crop yields, reduce infant mortalities, and on and on and on.

If following religious practice is supposed to make people better and the world a better place, I would say thousands of years of evidence is clear and the verdict is: It don't work. On the contrary. It is the root cause of much of the misery and agony throughout recorded history and in our time. So much for following "The Truth". Why, the faithful can't even agree on which of a bazillion versions of "The Truth" *IS* the truth.

That is the beauty of science. It doesn't depend on faith. 2+2=4 and H2O is water whether you are Christian or Muslim or Atheist or Venusian Slime Worm, and grativy will kill you if you fall off a tall building on Earth no matter what your faith or how many healing crystals you wear or under which astrological sign you were born.

Science is a unifying, objective, shared series of principles, unlike the divisive world of feuding religions.

Science is fundamentally about finding workable models of universal principles. It simply works.

In sum, science is to truth as fishes are to bicycles--or as reason is to faith.

Starboy

Thank you galiel. Well said.

Starboy

DD, sorry if I gave you the impression that I am trying to discredit you. That was not my intention at all. I guess I am trying to convince you that “truth” is a throwback to another time and place. We don’t live there anymore. This is the age of science and science is not about the “truth” or “faith”. To miss that point is to miss everything. Holding that point of view that science is about the “truth” is holding a religious point of view. Science is a completely new way of exploring and understanding our surroundings. Forget about “truth”.

Starboy

GodLessWarriorTM

Vander, science says that nothing exists. We are simply the seperation of opposites ....

Clutch

Just curious about all those who agree that science cannot/ought not answer questions like "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

How do you know this?

The history of science is the history of new theories, insights and conceptual revolutions that shed light on questions previously thought to be strictly theological, metaphysical or otherwise beyond the purview of science. So the apparently widespread confidence about what science cannot do must be predicated on some advance knowledge of what hitherto unknown scientific concepts, theories and insights may yet come along. In the absence of such perfect advance knowledge, any such claims about the limits of science are a matter of argument from ignorance.

The history of intellectual development is littered with the corpses of theses about what will never be scientifically explained. Perhaps a greater appreciation of this is in order, here.

Nat

"Vander, science says that nothing exists. We are simply the seperation of opposites .... "

This is a very good way of putting it - thanks.

Now, please realize there are different cosmological models that do not assume a net zero energy level for the Universe - though they aren't as popular right now.

Skeptical

Not to put too fine of a point on it, and perhaps my wording wasn't as good as it could be, but I'm not unequivocably saying that your thoughts are unknowable by _you_, only by _others_. I'm not just trying to play word games either. You can tell me something and be absolutely convinced of its truth, but you may be mistaken. If I have no way of verifying your information, it is, from a practical perspective, unknowable by me.

A good case in point are pathological liars. I know people who have this characteristic and they would pass any test you wish to give them to see if they are telling the truth and they will pass, even though empirical evidence would reveal falsehood. This is an extreme case, but it proves the point. It's not even necessary to believe the person is lying or intentionally trying to be deceptive. The human mind functions in complex ways, it's not just a simple matter of saying the person is lying. Self-deception, unknowingly, is rampant and common. Read a few books on psychology about this topic and you will see what I'm talking about.


I would say that _if_ anything is knowable, it _must_ be through empirical means. Let me put it this way. If we grant that objective reality has a meaning, we can know it through empirical validation. However, even if we grant that somethings are knowable through non-empirical means, _you could never be certain of its truth_ without an appeal to empirical data. If someone believes that they "just know" something, but cannot point to any empirical data, from the point of view of another person they are simply expressing an opinion, nothing more.

It must be empirically verifiable. This essentially means it must be something which can be detected by others and agreed upon as data. Now, you may say that there are things which we say in common everyday practice we "know" which are not empirical. For example, I might say I "know" my wife loves me, without being able to say I "know" what goes on in her head. This is true and I would grant that I can never say with exact precision that I "know" she loves me. However, I can see her external actions and reasonably conclude that she certainly _acts_ as if she loves me, claims that she does and for all practical purposes it's irrelevant whether I "know" what's going on in her head. None of this takes away from the fact that I cannot claim to "know" what is really going on in her head, because I cannot.

As I said before, it's not necessary that you accept that sometimes people don't really know their own emotions. I think that's a psychological fact that can be shown through current psychological research, but it's not necessary for you to agree to prove my point. However, what is true is that in general, you cannot know the _source_ of your feelings or thoughts, you can only _think_ you know the source. For example, compare the following statements:

1) I feel guilty for treating my friend poorly
2) I feel guilty because in my childhood, my parents raised me in such as way as to feel guilty anytime I stood up for myself
3) I feel guilty because aliens are controlling my thoughts
4) I feel guilty because Satan is influencing me

You might say that number 1 is more valid that the other statements, but in fact you cannot decide which is more valid without empirical data. I would go you one better. Even with the empirical data you can never say that explanation 1 is more valid than 2-4 because you can never validate or invalidate any of the others. You can examine a persons childhood, but you could never say definitively that in a particular case their upbringing did not affect them. One could not rule out that aliens or Satan was affecting a person in a particular way at a particular time.

There are an infinite number of non-empirical effects that could be posited as influencing you at a particular time and none of them could be eliminated on any basis other than empirical grounds. By virtue of their being non-empirical, they have eliminated any and all means by which they could be verified even in theory.

Yes, he may very well believe it and it may even be true. However, just as in my earlier argument about my wife's love, he can never _know_ it is true, he can only say the empirical evidence points to the idea that you are in fact feeling guilty. What's more, he can never know the _source_ of these feelings. Any of the 4 exaplanations offered above are equally unprovable by empirical means, and thus both equally valid and invalid.

The problem is not that they have a very high burden of proof. The problem is that non-empirically verifiable claims are not _capable_ of proof or disproof _even in theory_.

The equation on the board qualifies as empirical data. It is not NE data, nor is it a NEV explanation. What was in your head is irrelevant to what the data on the board is. For all I know, God put the equation in your head the instant before your hand moved. It doesn't matter what was in your head, the equation is on the board and empirically verifiable.

Actually, you have not provided what I view as examples. Here are a few examples of things which are either NE data or NEV explanations:

1) I am aware that God/Satan exists because I feel their presence.
2) Some Scientific explanations aren't true because God told me so
3) Satan controls the minds of unbelievers
4) My dog speaks to me telepathically, telling me about God and Satan

I defy you to come up with a way to show that any of these statements is true or false through empirical means.

Utterly and completely false. The only way your statement would be true is if we agree that there is no shared objective reality. If we cannot agree that there is a shared objective reality, then Ok, I would grant that we cannot rely on empiricism. However, it is also true that in that case, we cannot know anything at all so we're in no better shape by this appeal. If we agree that there is a shared, objective reality, then it follows that we can know this reality through empirical means. No such argument can be made for non-empirical data.

Let me state it as clearly as I can. There is no way even in practice to determine the validity of NE data nor NEV explanations without an appeal to empirical means. In many cases, one cannot even appeal to empirical means. Many NEV explanations are not capable of proof or disproof even in theory. Even when someone believes unequivocally that they know the source of their thoughts and feelings, they may be mistaken. We can never eliminate this possibility.

Let me try to crystalize this with a singular example. It appears you are a christian from some of your other posts, so let me ask something close to your heart. Suppose that someone claimed absolute knowledge that they knew for a fact that the stories of Jesus in the NT were, in fact, made up out of whole cloth and they claimed they knew this because God told them. They claim to speak to God every day and had been told this repeatedly. Assume they are completely serious and appear to have a long history of being honest and moral according to traditional judeo-christian standards. Now, they can offer no empirical proof of this obviously. What would you conclude of this person? Would you conclude they were deluded or that they were telling the truth? By what means would you invalidate their claims?

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: Skeptical ]</p>