On the Necessity of Proving Things

[warpspeedpetey]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, I WOULD NOT PUNISH THEM!! I thought i wrote that in plain English??? Wait! I DID… albertball-“i would never even dream of punishing them”

The straw-man is strong with you.

i dont mean to make a straw man, i mean to point out that if G-d does not allow people to choose to be seperate from him, thats not really love. thats like saying a kidnapper just really loves his kidnapee.

So you do not believe in a fire and brimstone hell?

I really wish you would make you mind up. You all claim to have a relationship with god yet you cant agree on one aspect of this “god”.

youre thinking of protestants, who take a literal view of almost everything. for us hell is unpleasant, but its a choice a person makes.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

OK lets go one at a time, realllllllllllll slow for you .

I can see the ISS with my one eyes, i have a 10" meade. Crush away…

easily done.

the ISS doesnt have a thing to do with the moonlanding, construction didnt start until 1998, youre almost 3 decades too late…crushed.

i always wondered why you mentioned that in the context of the moonlanding conversation:shrug:

 

[Syntax]

Throw your computer away, clearly it’s working mechanisms will be proven false one day!

That’s a great analogy, actually. Thanks for the example. This is precisely the point you just missed. No one would throw away science precisely because it works.

But utility is no guide to truth, as we continue to see by the falsifications of past scientific theories.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

By self-refuting,

no, i mean lterally self refuting, a logical contradiction, therefore false.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-refuting_idea#Verification-_and_falsification-principles

Verification- and falsification-principles
The statements “statements are meaningless unless they can be empirically verified” and “statements are meaningless unless they can be empirically falsified” are both claimed to be self-refuting on the basis that they can neither be empirically verified nor falsified[31]

I think you mean self-improving. Science gets closer and closer to inaccuracy (and if you’re cynical you take this to be “periodically wrong”),

not just periodically, but every previous theory is ultimately found to be false, as demonstrated by that list of superseded theories.

while many call this self correcting, thats nonsensical. the correction would have to be true, and often it isnt.

while religion is wrong forever.

i can point to the failed theories of scienfce, and the logical contradictions inherent to the philosophy of science.

can you do this with religion? is it a logical contradiction, or self refuting?

Throw your computer away, clearly it’s working mechanisms will be proven false one day!

a computer isnt a theory, its an object.

but any theory can be useful and still false. caloric theory for instance. it was useful, but ultimately false.

every time we fire up a particle accelerator, we change our fundamental understanding of the universe.

science is hardly a settled matter. but when it is, religion will still be a mystery.

 

[Syntax]

a computer isnt a theory, its an object.

Quit true. But think of how self-defeating Schn’s analogy really is. I actually love it! If scientific theories are just like computers, then theories are merely programmed to deliver outputs (predictions) given certain (name removed by moderator)uts (evidence). So they are merely functional utility devices that yield results that we want, while not having anything to do with pointing us to the objective truth of things. uh oh…

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Quit true. But think of how self-defeating Schn’s analogy really is. I actually love it! If scientific theories are just like computers, then theories are merely programmed to deliver outputs (predictions) given certain (name removed by moderator)uts (evidence). So they are merely functional utility devices that yield results that we want, while not having anything to do with pointing us to the objective truth of things. uh oh…

they ought to teach critical thinking in schools, its ridiculous that this isnt common knowledge.

 

[Oreoracle]

I wonder if all the science-bashers have a better standard of evidence than an empirical one? Maybe we can all go back to the olden days when you could claim to know things by intuition and not be laughed at. LOL

 

[Syntax]

I wonder if all the science-bashers have a better standard of evidence than an empirical one? Maybe we can all go back to the olden days when you could claim to know things by intuition and not be laughed at. LOL

There you go again: jumping to conclusions again oreoracle. You confuse justification with truth. Science is “justified” pragmatically by its results, but it is reasonable to suppose that it has less to do with pointing us to the truth than we initially thought.

Just out of curiosity: what exactly is this alleged “standard of evidence”? In other words, many times does a scientific community have to verify a hypothesis before our assent to its truth becomes reasonable, especially if all past theories have been eventually falsified?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I wonder if all the science-bashers have a better standard of evidence than an empirical one? Maybe we can all go back to the olden days when you could claim to know things by intuition and not be laughed at. LOL

i like science, check out my handle. i dont like it, when its misunderstood, and then that misunderstanding is used as a basis for atheism, or attacks on theists who dont have any familiarity with the philosphy of science.

as to a better standard, i say, logic.

you can be no more sure of the axioms, but they arent self refuting, or logical contradictions. empiricism is a logical contradiction.

ill take what i know is likely true over what i know is false.

 

[Syntax]

i like science, check out my handle. i dont like it, when its misunderstood, and then that misunderstanding is used as a basis for atheism, or attacks on theists who dont have any familiarity with the philosphy of science.

as to a better standard, i say, logic.

you can be no more sure of the axioms, but they arent self refuting, or logical contradictions. empiricism is a logical contradiction.

ill take what i know is likely true over what i know is false.

Hear, hear!

 

[Schn]

Quit true. But think of how self-defeating Schn’s analogy really is. I actually love it! If scientific theories are just like computers, then theories are merely programmed to deliver outputs (predictions) given certain (name removed by moderator)uts (evidence). So they are merely functional utility devices that yield results that we want, while not having anything to do with pointing us to the objective truth of things. uh oh…

Do you have a better method? The universe is a black box, to anyone living in it, so the best we can do is poke it and watch the outputs. If a bunch of similar (name removed by moderator)uts deliver the same output, we theorise about why that is so.

Newton, for example, knew full well that his gravitational theory was not an explanation about why gravity works as it does (Large Hadron Collider wants to find that out), but instead is a model of how the universe works. Steadily more accurate models are the best we can do, the only better alternative is to create a full size real model of the universe. This would be problematic.

 

[Oreoracle]

There you go again: jumping to conclusions again oreoracle. You confuse justification with truth.

No, there you go jumping to conclusions. You can complain about science all day, but if you have no better system to offer, what’s the point? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but you guys need to put up or shut up.

When it comes to deriving facts about the world, history shows us that we have two options: We can observe, gather data, and propose sufficient explanations of phenomena, constantly modifying said explanations so that they become more and more accurate, OR we can make **** up. Your choice.

By the way, previous theories aren’t always “wrong” on the whole. Usually, there is some truth to the abandoned theories, and whatever accuracy the previous theories did have sometimes lead us to better, more accurate theories. Of course, sometimes their inaccuracy does the same thing, but that doesn’t mean that every dismissed theory has been “all wrong.”

Science is “justified” pragmatically by its results, but it is reasonable to suppose that it has less to do with pointing us to the truth than we initially thought.

Certainly, but it’s all we’ve got. You can stay here and moan about it, but we have no better way to assess the physical world and declare what we believe to be true about it.

]Just out of curiosity: what exactly is this alleged “standard of evidence”? In other words, many times does a scientific community have to verify a hypothesis before our assent to its truth becomes reasonable, especially if all past theories have been eventually falsified?

As I said, a theory is not a single proposition, but a series of propositions, and so it may be partially true. Our situation is not black and white as you make it out to be. This is why we say that theories have been corrected, not falsified; the past theories are improved upon, not merely thrown into the garbage.

 

[Oreoracle]

as to a better standard, i say, logic.

I pointed out the absurdity behind this statement once before, but you ignored me. Logic tells us NOTHING about the soundness of an argument. It only tells us whether it is valid. For example, can logic point out the flaw in this reasoning below?

1. All substances above 90 degrees are frozen.
2. My blood is a substance above 90 degrees.
   C. Therefore, my blood is frozen.

According to logic, this is flawless reasoning. Of course, logic is helpless when it comes to the truth or falsity of premises. Does logic know that many substances above 90 degrees are not frozen? No? What a shame. It looks like we need an inductive system. Ya know, something like the scientific method? Wait, are you telling me the system that is better than science depends on science to determine soundness?

you can be no more sure of the axioms, but they arent self refuting, or logical contradictions. empiricism is a logical contradiction.

We’ve been through this before, too. Just as no experiment can “prove” empiricism, no logical argument can “prove” the law of identity. You assume it. Axioms cannot be demonstrated by the systems they contribute to; you’ll always end up with circularity if you attempt to do so. In this regard, neither logic nor any other system is better off than empiricism.

 

[Syntax]

Do you have a better method? The universe is a black box, to anyone living in it, so the best we can do is poke it and watch the outputs. If a bunch of similar (name removed by moderator)uts deliver the same output, we theorise about why that is so.

Newton, for example, knew full well that his gravitational theory was not an explanation about why gravity works as it does (Large Hadron Collider wants to find that out), but instead is a model of how the universe works. Steadily more accurate models are the best we can do, the only better alternative is to create a full size real model of the universe. This would be problematic.

Sure.

Both you and oreo have us all wrong. We are not abandoning science. We are simply criticizing everyone’s misuse of it as if it were the final aribiter on truth, justification, and intellectual inquiry. All of you empiricists exclude philosophy, mathematics, morality, logic, and religion as additional means to truth–no of which are in direct conflict with ANYTHING science says. If you think there is a conflict, then either (1) someone has misused religion or (2) someone has misused science.

That’s all we’re saying.

 

[Oreoracle]

All of you empiricists exclude philosophy, mathematics, morality, logic, and religion as additional means to truth–no of which are in direct conflict with ANYTHING science says.

That’s all we’re saying.

Look at the pot calling the kettle black. Empiricism has many definitions. Personally, I understand it to be the belief that claims about the physical world are only justified if physical evidence supports them. In other words, observation is the best way to determine facts (facts are different than conceptual truths and tautologies, of course). That’s all I’m saying. We can have conceptual truths as well, but that’s not the issue at hand. Also, I concede that I don’t believe in moral truths (you can’t derive an ought from an is), but this is not due to my empiricism; it’s due to common sense. Claims about what ought to be don’t have truth values because “should” isn’t something that makes sense in objects. When was the last time you could put obligation, for example, under a microscope?

 

[Syntax]

No, there you go jumping to conclusions. You can complain about science all day, but if you have no better system to offer, what’s the point? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but you guys need to put up or shut up.

No! You have Petey and myself all wrong. We are not abandoning science. We are simply criticizing everyone’s **misuse **of it as if it were the final aribiter on truth, justification, and intellectual inquiry. We are proposing that you get the naive notion out of your heads that science is in direct conflict with philosophy, morality, and religion as the only means to truth. If you think science IS in direct conflict here, then you have completely misunderstood both science, philosophy, **and **relgion. The problem is not with science–the problem is YOUR misuse of it by trying to make it say things it **doesn’t ** even say at all.

That’s all we’re saying: that there is no conflict. If you think there is a conflict, for instance, between Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism–that is a conflict that arises out of philosophy NOT science. Materialism is a philosophical thesis, not a scientific theory.

When it comes to deriving facts about the world, history shows us that we have two options: We can observe, gather data, and propose sufficient explanations of phenomena, constantly modifying said explanations so that they become more and more accurate, OR we can make **** up. Your choice.

This is a huge oversimplification! It’s not science vs. making **** up. That’s a false dichotomy. I am proposing science + philosophy + religion + logic + mathematics.

By the way, previous theories aren’t always “wrong” on the whole. Usually, there is some truth to the abandoned theories, and whatever accuracy the previous theories did have sometimes lead us to better, more accurate theories. Of course, sometimes their inaccuracy does the same thing, but that doesn’t mean that every dismissed theory has been “all wrong.”

But you’re going to have to make a strong case for what exactly is being preserved across theory change, if anything at all. Of course scientific methodology has remained the same with some refinements in testing and accuracy. But the meanings of entitie or things one theory proposed is abandoned altogether in favor of the meanings of those proposed by another theory. Newtonian gravitational 'force," for instance, is no longer interpreted as instantaneous action at a distance, but gets completely abandoned to mean the curvature of space-time structure in the vicinity of large massive bodies. And this space-time curvature is NOT instantaneous. I call that a “complete overhall” if you ask me. “Gravity” means entirely different things here. Absolute space, absolute time, absolute motion, and absolute velocity no longer exist either, but get replaced by the relativity of inertial reference frames. That is also a clear instance of abandoning the meanings of these theoretical entities of old.

Certainly, but it’s all we’ve got. You can stay here and moan about it, but we have **no better way **to assess the physical world and declare what we believe to be true about it.

Empiricism is the best way to access the empirical domain through inquiry, yes. But it is not the final arbiter on morality, religion, God, metaphysics, human nature, or logic and mathematics. These other disciplines should be working in tandem with science, not against it. And science does, in fact, work in tandem with these other forms of inquiry as well. So there is no conflict unless you’re a religious fundamentalist who thinks the world is 6000 years old, or a scientist who says lack of empirical evidence for God’s existence means we have no reason to believe God exists. NO scientific theory says this. YOU say it, or rather, your assumed superhuman criterion of the perfect reliability of scientific methodology says this.

As I said, a theory is not a single proposition, but a series of propositions, and so it may be partially true.

Absolutely. Philosophy and religion are also a set of a series of propositions, so what gets said in philosophy and religion may well be partially true as well.

Our situation is not black and white as you make it out to be. This is why we say that theories have been corrected, not falsified; the past theories are improved upon, not merely thrown into the garbage.

uh…in case you haven’t noticed, NO scientists will accept theory unless it is, in principle, falsifiable. If all past theories are merely “corrected” and not falsified, then you are using **ad hoc ** reasoning to save a theory from refutation which means that a theory can never actually BE falsified. But Popper’s own words, “Unfalsifiability is not a virtue of scientific theory, but a vice.” So again, you are going to have to do a lot of work in telling us what exactly it is that gets preserved and what exactly it is that gets thrown out across theory change.

 

[Syntax]

Empiricism has many definitions. Personally, I understand it to be the belief that claims about the physical world are only justified if physical evidence supports them.

Right. Then quit extending empiricism’s reach to include topics such as God, morality, religion, and philosophy then! Not everything in these other forms of inquiry make empirical claims. Hume, Locke, and Berkeley would give you a spanking if you actually tried to extend empiricism’s reach into these other domains here.

In other words, observation is the best way to determine facts (facts are different than conceptual truths and tautologies, of course).

What do you mean by “fact”? There are also moral facts, mathematical facts, spiritual facts, abstract philosophical facts, linguistic facts about meaning, etc., etc.

We can have conceptual truths as well, but that’s not the issue at hand. Also, I concede that I don’t believe in moral truths (you can’t derive an ought from an is), but this is not due to my empiricism; it’s due to common sense.

No one is trying to derive an anti-Humean “ought” from an “is,” here. Also, if moral truths don’t exist, this is a positive claim you are going to have to defend instead of just erecting it as “common sense.” It is NOT self-evident to me, and it is certainly not self-evident to the majority of humankind. So again, you need much support for this claim otherwise your belief is irrational.

Claims about what ought to be don’t have truth values because “should” isn’t something that makes sense in objects. When was the last time you could put obligation, for example, under a microscope?

It doesn’t have to. You are assuming that “shoulds” *should *be empirically observable. But where on earth do you get this “epistemic should” of your own? Does the empirical world tell you that you “should” be putting moral theories under a microscope? This is inconsistent with your very own rejection of all “shoulds,” whether epistemic or moral. So you can’t consistently hold that moral claims **ought to **be empirically observable.

 

[Oreoracle]

No! You have Petey and myself all wrong. We are not abandoning science. We are simply criticizing everyone’s **misuse **of it as if it were the final aribiter on truth, justification, and intellectual inquiry. We are proposing that you get the naive notion out of your heads that science is in direct conflict with philosophy, morality, and religion as the only means to truth.

Well, science is in conflict with religion. Fortunately, Christians always have their Church officials around to revise silly claims like the biblical claim that the first people lived to be 800-900 years old. Now, that stuff is merely held to be symbolic. But hey, that’s religion for you: today’s assertions are tomorrow’s symbols. You do realize that such things were not always considered symbolic, right? Those were serious claims back in the day, until science came along.

So yes, I disagree that science and religion should work in conjunction. What we see before us is this cycle: religion makes outrageous claims, science demands evidence, religion claims to be above providing evidence, then some discovery makes the religion backpedal, claiming that the previous claim was meant to be understood symbolically. Religion is constantly receding from the advance of science in panic, and everybody who can read a history book knows it. The God of the Gaps is running out of gaps.

If you think science IS in direct conflict here, then you have completely misunderstood both science, philosophy, **and **relgion. The problem is not with science–the problem is YOUR misuse of it by trying to make it say things it **doesn’t ** even say at all.

You guys are making claims, and all scientists want is evidence to support those claims. If you feel offended by that request, then please feel free to migrate to a place that doesn’t require such a high standard of evidence, like a third-world country. Have fun.

That’s all we’re saying: that there is no conflict. If you think there is a conflict, for instance, between Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism–that is a conflict that arises out of philosophy NOT science. Materialism is a philosophical thesis, not a scientific theory.

I didn’t deny that the scientific method was based on philosophies.

This is a huge oversimplification! It’s not science vs. making **** up. That’s a false dichotomy. I am proposing science + philosophy + religion + logic + mathematics.

Logic and math deal with concepts, not with the natural world. Religions claim that there is more than the natural world and that the beings in that supernatural world react with this world. They then claim that they need not provide evidence for this additional world they posit. If that’s so, then I should be able to posit a separate universe consisting of unicorns, goblins, and fairies while using the very same tactic: “I discovered this world through reason, but I can’t be expected to provide evidence for it.”

uh…in case you haven’t noticed, NO scientists will accept theory unless it is, in principle, falsifiable.

Yes, but I’m saying that discrediting some propositions of a theory does not amount to discrediting all propositions. This doesn’t mean that the propositions that remain are unfalsifiable, only that they haven’t been falsified. In fact, I don’t think I can come up with a scientific theory that didn’t correctly account for at least one aspect of what it intended to explain. Can you? How many theories have been all wrong?

 

[AlbertBall]

Well, science is in conflict with religion. Fortunately, Christians always have their Church officials around to revise silly claims like the biblical claim that the first people lived to be 800-900 years old. Now, that stuff is merely held to be symbolic. But hey, that’s religion for you: today’s assertions are tomorrow’s symbols. You do realize that such things were not always considered symbolic, right? Those were serious claims back in the day, until science came along.

So yes, I disagree that science and religion should work in conjunction. What we see before us is this cycle: religion makes outrageous claims, science demands evidence, religion claims to be above providing evidence, then some discovery makes the religion backpedal, claiming that the previous claim was meant to be understood symbolically. Religion is constantly receding from the advance of science in panic, and everybody who can read a history book knows it. The God of the Gaps is running out of gaps.

EXACTLY! Great post.

 

[Syntax]

Well, science is in conflict with religion. Fortunately, Christians always have their Church officials around to revise silly claims like the Biblical claim that the first people lived to be 800-900 years old. Now, that stuff is merely held to be symbolic. But hey, that’s religion for you: today’s assertions are tomorrow’s symbols. You do realize that such things were not always considered symbolic, right? Those were serious claims back in the day, until science came along.

So what? A religious person will believe many things that are false that are caused by his religious beliefs. But these false-hoods are not necessarily part of his Official Doctrine, but just a function of their own ignorance. Ptolemy use to think the sun revolved around the earth too. But that doesn’t discount all the other beliefs he held. Further, scientific theories in future will likewise be tomorrow’s symbols as well, just like the Caloric Theory of Heat is today.

So yes, I disagree that science and religion should work in conjunction.

This is because you don’t understand HOW they can work in conjunction. When I became baptized, I didn’t suddenly abandon all science. LOL! But this is what you are implying everyone who is religious DOES. I am saying you are making too many generalizations that are clearly false.

I didn’t deny that the scientific method was based on philosophies.

But I didn’t even say this. In fact, you are saying the opposite of what I just said. Scientific methodology is NOT base on any philosophical system. Rather, philosophers construct unscientific philosophical theories from science which scientific methodologies clearly do not support either, e.g., “all that exists is material,” “empirical evidence is the only standard of justification and warrant for all domains.”

What we see before us is this cycle: religion makes outrageous claims, science demands evidence, religion claims to be above providing evidence, then some discovery makes the religion backpedal, claiming that the previous claim was meant to be understood symbolically.

I don’t deny some of this. But give me one instance where science has falsified the Apostle’s Creed which is core tenant of all Christian Doctrine.

Religion is constantly receding from the advance of science in panic, and everybody who can read a history book knows it. The God of the Gaps is running out of gaps.

hahaha! :clapping: Nice sweeping Dawkins-style generalizations! Oh, you’re so qualified to know what you’re talking about…

You guys are making claims, and all scientists want is evidence to support those claims. If **you feel offended **by that request, then please feel free to migrate to a place that doesn’t require such a high standard of evidence, like a third-world country. Have fun.

“You feel offended” “migrate to third-world countries where everyone is ignorant”…

You repeatedly result to character bashing when you are out of anything worthwhile and intelligent to give. This is a clear indication that you have nothing interesting to say at all.
I don’t have to pander to this nonsense.

Logic and math deal with concepts, not with the natural world. Religions claim that there is more than the natural world and that the beings in that supernatural world react with this world. They then claim that they need not provide evidence for this additional world they posit. If that’s so, then I should be able to posit a separate universe consisting of unicorns, goblins, and fairies while using the very same tactic: “I discovered this world through reason, but I can’t be expected to provide evidence for it.”

This is a poor argument. You need to do much better than this. First, spiritual beings are incorporeal, so they are, in principle, empirically unverfiable. Second, you just flattly assume that empirical standards of warrant should be applied to spiritual claims. Third, you assume the belief in God is on par with a belief in fairies and goblins–for which you lack an argument. Fourth, you assume the religious believer (such as myself) lacks ANY reason for believing that God exists at all–another false assumption for which you clearly lack any evidence. So whatever, Sherlock…just go about your merry way making stupid generalizations, just like AlbertBall and the rest on here. Where are your arguments anyways?? I haven’t seen even ONE argument put forth on the table yet at all. If you want to discuss about ME, instead of putting me into the camp of every other ignorant fool, then address ME, not other people! I know just as many atheists who can’t even tie their shoes. But I don’t lump you into that category, now do I? NO. So stop doing that to me.

Yes, but I’m saying that discrediting some propositions of a theory does not amount to discrediting all propositions. This doesn’t mean that the propositions that remain are unfalsifiable, only that they haven’t been falsified.

Just like philosophy and religion. Why are you holding a double standard?? You clearly think that it is perfectly permissible to trash **all **religious propositions if one or another is falsified. But then you claim that we shouldn’t be trashing all science because some of these other propositions may very well be true.

In fact, I don’t think I can come up with a scientific theory that didn’t correctly account for at least one aspect of what it intended to explain. Can you? How many theories have been all wrong?

Again, utility is not synonymous with truth. Newtonian mechanics still “works” on terrestrial planes, but it doesn’t work for the grand cosmological scale. And we’ve abandoned Newtonian mechanics as being capable of saying anything about the “deeper truth” about how things work. It is useful, not true. But false beliefs are very useful too. Interestingly enough, you accuse religious people of the this exact same error that I accused you of.