Originally posted by Eladar…I'd say science is the attempt to understand how this universe works
I disagree. I'd say science is the attempt to understand how this universe works. Once you try to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable assumptions about the existance of God, you are dealing with religion. I believe that science and religion are not supposed to mix.
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And how would it do that without using at some point some criteria for distinguishing reasonable assumptions from unreasonable assumptions? The essence of science is that it is knowledge derived from scientific method
-I would say that one way you could see scientific method (but not the usual way) is as criteria for distinguishing reasonable assumptions from unreasonable assumptions; the criteria being vaguely along the lines;
“if the totality of evidence/reason points to a hypothesis being true then it could be a reasonable assumption to assume the hypothesis is true (depending on the strength of evidence/reason for it) else certainly not so”
Thus one implication of this is if there is NO evidence/reason to support a hypothesis then, implicitly according to scientific method (and thus science), it couldn’t be part of a “reasonable” assumption.
-and that applies to every hypothesis thus including any hypothesis of a supernatural deity.
And how would it do that without using at some point some criteria for distinguishing reasonable assumptions from unreasonable assumptions?
Based on the fact that it can be reproduced. Science deals with how things work, not ultimate truth. Can it be reproduced? Can it be used for something useful in some way? That's what science is all about.
Originally posted by Eladar…And how would it do that without using at some point some criteria for distinguishing reasonable assumptions from unreasonable assumptions?
[b]And how would it do that without using at some point some criteria for distinguishing reasonable assumptions from unreasonable assumptions?
Based on the fact that it can be reproduced. Science deals with how things work, not ultimate truth. Can it be reproduced? Can it be used for something useful in some way? That's what science is all about.[/b]
Based on the fact that it can be reproduced
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Reproducibility only helps to give scientific credence to a scientific hypothesis -it isn’t necessarily what defines a reasonable assumption that that scientific hypothesis rests on. One reasonable assumption implicitly made when making any hypothesis about external reality is that the external world exists -not sure what that assumption with has to do with reproducibility as I don’t see what kind of reproducibility can be used to verify this assumption.
I think you may slightly misunderstand the nature of science here.
Would you refute the following assertion I made in my last post about the criteria science implicitly uses to distinguishing reasonable assumptions from unreasonable assumptions?:
“if the totality of evidence/reason points to a hypothesis being true then it could be a reasonable assumption to assume the hypothesis is true (depending on the strength of evidence/reason for it) else certainly not so”
….Science deals with how things WORK, not ultimate truth.
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I think this may be too simplistic; is the science of mathematic about how “things WORK“? -I think that would be an odd way of phrasing it.
And what makes you assume there is an “ultimate truth” (this could depend on exactly what you mean by “ultimate truth” ) if that is what you assume?
No need to go around in circles. I just stated my point of view. I never thought you'd accept it. We simply disagree. No matter how many pages we waste trying to explain to the other person why he is wrong is going to change that fact.
So cut to the chase, simply state that the other person is wrong and move on.
Originally posted by EladarI was hoping that we wouldn’t simply state what we each believe (because that would be relatively boring) but rather explain to each other our reasoning behind what we each believe (because that could be interesting) and then we could both learn something from this?
No need to go around in circles. I just stated my point of view. I never thought you'd accept it. We simply disagree. No matter how many pages we waste trying to explain to the other person why he is wrong is going to change that fact.
So cut to the chase, simply state that the other person is wrong and move on.
-this is often (but not always) what I want from these talks with other people on these forums.
Such discussions are huge wastes of time. Telling the other person what we believe is all there is. The rest is trying to get the other person to agree with our point of view. But since there is a fundamental difference in our perceptions, there is no common ground upon which to discuss. So all we are left with is "you are wrong and I'm right".
I'm just cutting to the chase.