Scientific Knowledge

No, not necessarily... but it helps!

In Message 241:, Straggler wrote:

quote:

---

What does experience tell you is the necessary source of propositions for which there is no evidence? In the absence of any supporting evidence whatsoever where but the minds of creative beings unrestrained by external truths in their conceptions can such notions come from? What does experience (in conjunction with those critical thinking skills) tell you about the likelihood of evidentially baseless propositions being correct? Possible in some philosophical sense. They cannot be discarded with absolute certainty. But "very improbable" as actual aspects of reality.

---

According to this logic, if the proposition is: "there are no gods", and we don't have any evidence for that, then it should be considered very improbable that there aren't

I did too answer that question, back in Message 160:

quote:

---

Well why do they "work" more successfully than the alternatives unless they are more accurate descriptions of reality than the alternatives? More "correct" than the alternatives, if you will.

​

There's multiple reasons. Part of it is how the theory is set-up (rigorous and parsimonious), how simple the falsification test would be, and what you're testing it on.

---

I referred you to it again in Message 164 when you asked the same question again. This is the third time, I won't do it anymore. If you're theory more closely matches reality, then it will work better, but working better doesn't necessarily mean that your threory more closely matches reality. Bullshit. They don't even address them at all and that's gotta be one of the stupidest reason to.

That's a seperate issue, you repeating it is your own problem.*IF*, I repeat, If the proposition was as such, would you reject it if there was no evidence for it?Its an application of the same logic to a different proposition. But science rules things out by falsifying them, not because of a lack of evidence for them... those things it just ignores. Its a non-position like agnosticism is.

If A then B does not imply that If B then A... If I end up with better predictions of the position of a falling body by using Newtonian Mechanics than I do by using General Relativity, that wouldn't mean that Newtonian Mechanics more closely matches reality. Sure, when I conclude something, there's all kinds of different mutually exclusive proposition you could come up with that would necessarily be eliminated, but that's neither here nor there. And thus highly unlikely, given the proposition: "there are no gods", if there's a lack of evidence for that then it should be rejected as highly unlikely, ergo...there *are* gods wait, you sure?