lakeman

Then we are agreed - all of empiricism and naturalism is just a rational hypothesis that may or may not be right. Now if you elevate it above the level of a hypothesis then it becomes faith based. If you state that the alternative theories are false then you have committed a logical error.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
-James Madison-

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splansing

You aren't suggesting that all hypotheses are created equal, are you? A hypothesis that succeeds at predicting nothing and disagrees with available evidence-- while not directly contradicting it --does not, in my opinion, deserve much credence.

And a "hypothesis" that cannot be disproven is not what I would call a hypothesis.

"There are no miracles." This is a hypothesis. You show me a single miracle, and it's disproven. Demonstrate the hand of god in action, and it is disproven. Simple enough. Just a single example will do to completely disprove the hypothesis.

"Miracles are possible...they just don't happen very often." This is not a hypothesis. How do I even begin to disprove this? I would have to collect the entire set of space and time and clearly show that at no point in that set did any miracles occur. And since that is absurd, I'd say that this is a poor attempt at a hypothesis.

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lakeman

[quote=splansing;656084]No, not really. The statements of the faithful are not ususally hypotheses. I said they were alternatives. Since when do the ideas we use to describe the world all have to be couched in scientific terms.

You are correct, your hypothesis is not disproven. Since when is the absence of evidence much of a claim. Oh right, that is the basis for all scientific laws - namely that so far there is no evidence to contradict them. Ocassionally evidence does appear to contradict know laws but then the law is just modified to account for the new evidence and that is called (oh I forget what you call it, adjustment? adaptation?). And there is actually nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to get so hung up and dogmatic about the ideas you hold that are merely not disproven that you think the alternatives are disproven. Or to get so hung up on the principles of thought that you have defined for your discipline that you think these are the only valid principles.

But there is evidence to contradict laws of science. Every report of a miracle is evidence. It is not evidence that follows the rules that the scientists have created but then again they do not hold exclusive rights on truth. Reports of miracles have not been objectively validated. But they are subjectively validated for those who have seen them.

I cannot prove to you that anything supernatural exists. Nevertheless, a majority of people have evaluated the world using their own subjective experiences and have decided that it does. Historically a majority of scientist have too as many still do today. On this forum most Christians have come down and said that the main reason they believe is due to some private experience they have had.

So what do we have in the end: you have your laws that fit your world view very well and have not been disproven and I have my faith that fits my world view very well and has not been disproven either.

It could be that you have just not had yours yet or that you do not want to see it.

Why do you insist on using your ideas to make me live one way or another? I know, because there are Christians out there who are using their ideas to try to make you live one way or another. Wouldn't it be better to take the high road and point out how they being coercive in their actions without belittling their faith?

Your right it is not a hypotheses. It is an idea. And if you wanted to disprove it you would have to do that. So much for claiming it is false. You can say it doesn't fit your world view. But your world view is not that much better than anyone elses. You can just say that you don't agree with it and live and let live. Or in this ever changing world in which we live in...

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
-James Madison-

splansing

I'm not really sure what that whole rant was about, but I was responding primarily to the statement above.

My point is that there are hypotheses that are a lot more credible than some um..."ideas" as you called them. The primary evidence in support of scientific hypotheses is not simply that they are not disproven. That is an absurdity, illustrated well enough by all of the flying spaghetti monster stuff. The thing that really tends to support hypotheses and lend them credibility is their power to predict reality. Since reality is what we're looking for, it turns out that system works really well.

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lakeman

There most certainly are some very good hypothesis out there. But naturalism is not one of them. Meanwhile the good hypothesis you speak of do not contradict religious ideas and the faith based idea of naturalism does. So at this point it is just one religious idea versus another.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
-James Madison-

splansing

The notion that there are rational explanations for phenomena in the universe has held up pretty well, and done a wonderful job of predicting events in realtiy. By discounting completely made-up and unverifiable excsuses like, "It is god's chariot crossing the sky," humans have opened the door to learn things like, "It is a fusion reaction sustained by gravity 93 million miles away from us."

As for naturalism...

Oh, wait. My bad. I was changing the subject again.

You know...the point was that some hypothesis do a terrific job of predicting reality. That is how science "decides" what a good hypothesis is. So what events have your religious hypotheses helped to shed a little light on? General relativity? Here's an atom bomb and a fission reactor. Here's light bending around stars and galaxies. Here's background radiation. Here's a whole universe of predicted observations from the universe revealed and verified layer by layer as our powers of observation are expanded via things like the Hubble ST.

You see the difference? See how the science works? If you put your religious um...hypotheses...to the same tests you put any hypothesis to, you'd be forced to abandon them as utterly unworkable. At best. Most of them actually contradict hypotheses that do stand up to the rigors of scientific examination, and so would be dismissed outright.

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Ausinus

Is that why christian science is an oxymoron?

The good of the People is the highest law.
- Cicero

lakeman

[quote=splansing;659022]I believe in rationalism. That has never been my complaint.
Yes you were. Your first paragraph defending rationalism has no bearing on the validity of naturalism or empiricism.

You are right again. Scientific hypothesis do a good job of predicting the natural world. Well sort of. They are wrong far more than they are right but eventually they are right. Is it still a prediction if we had to wait for 10,000 trials before we got it right?

By the way when you are talking about predictions you are talking about falsification. A hallmark of science. If a prediction fails to be true then the theory behind it must be false. What this does not say is that if a prediction comes true then the theory behind it must be true. The prediction can be right for the wrong reasons. And when applied at it's best falsification doesn't even say that the prediction came true - it only says that the prediction was not false.

But you have failed to indicate that scientific predictions do anything at all in regards to the supernatural world. Which since you don't believe in it makes sense. And why would scientific theories do anything at all in describing the supernatural? The exploration starts with the belief that there is no supernatural, and then develops theories, then looks for data regarding that theory. It is not suprise that the anti-supernatural bias results in little evidence for the supernatural. This bias was the whole reason for the creation of Popperian falsification.

Does the supernatural ever effect the natural in very rare events. Well Einstein thought that the evidence was there and he said he had no choice but to begrudingly accept the notion that there had to be some sort of God.

yes I see the difference. Do you? Science does a pretty good job of describing and making predictions about the natural domain. It does nothing about the supernatural domain.

The Christian faith does a good job if describing the spiritual world.

The natural world and the spiritual world are separate enough that it would make no sense to try to use the heuristic rules that are designed to test one to test the other. That would be like measuring liquid volume with a voltmeter.

Rational thought is where the two intersect. And the only contradictions between science an Christianity are in the minds of people who write biased skeptic websites and the minds of new earth creationists who deny science. No one has yet to post a rational contradiction.

Have you ever read this?

The Nature and Philosophy of Science

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
-James Madison-

Ausinus

There is no evidence to suppose there is anything 'supernatural' in the world, much less any intersection between the two. Your arguments are not refutable, not because they have any sort of validity, but because the basis of them is something that is maintained to be completely beyond the ken of science and empirical evidence - any time we ask for evidence you respond with 'it is beyond evidence so i cant prove that it exists in your terms'.

But by this logic, the flying spaghetti monster could be an actual entity.

The good of the People is the highest law.
- Cicero

Oftencold

You know, "supernatural," is just a term for higher orders of nature that we have yet to understand.

If incontrovertible proof of a Supreme Being appeared today, many people would simply call it "a fact of nature, previously unknown and hardly supernatural."

This is an absurdity.

In Galaxy GN7-1987 The Spaghetti Entities are regarded as poets, musicians, and curiously, as accomplished mime artists. Social burdens of course, but hardly monsters.