Scientific Knowledge

I think this is what it all boils down to. If you want to be a nit picker, RAZD is correct. Absolute knowledge does require absolute certainty. However, we don't live in a world that affords absolute certainty. What we have instead is practical knowledge that works for our day to day lives.My own feelings are that practical knowledge is different from faith based beliefs. While we may not have absolute certainty, we do have previous experiences and independent verification through inference that an idea seems to work. This is in stark contrast to faith based beliefs where there is no verification or inference from independent data.Science is practical knowledge. It doesn't pretend to be anything else. If you are looking for answers to metaphysical answers of ultimate knowledge and absolute certainty then you probably don't want to use science as your epistemology. We can dream up fantasies of why the scientific method could be rotten at the core (e.g. Last Thursdayism), but at the end of the day we use scientific knowledge because it works.

I think there is something else going on. Even when it is made clear that scientific knowledge is tentative, creationists still push the idea that creationism is scientific. If what you say is true we should see the opposite effect, but we don't. In forums like these we sometimes jump on creationists who use phrases like, "show me evidence that proves the theory". We tell them that they don't know how science works, explain how theories are tentative and never proven, and (I think) unfairly attack their understanding of science based on this one phrase.Perhaps this conversation even takes a turn towards the genetic evidence, and I happen to use this quote from a peer reviewed and well respected paper on ERV's:"Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 109 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14)." emphasis mine
Just a moment...Uh oh. So what do I do now? Here are two scientists (the authors) who use the word proof as part of a scientific hypothesis, and it is in a peer reviewed scientific paper. So are the authors ignorant of how science works? Are the editors and reviewers also ignorant of how science works? How did this slip through?The problem is that scientists tend to use sloppy language knowing that their peers understand how science works and can read between the lines. Scientists also let inappropriate anthropomorphic and teleological language slip into their papers for the same reasons.Should scientists pay more attention to the language they use? In a perfect world, yes they should. However, I hate the idea of scientists being strapped down with language and metaphysics. Scientists tend to view themselves as mavericks, whether that is really true or not. Scientists have a bit of machismo, and we tend to relish it a bit. So how macho is it to be strapped down by grammar nazis? Not very.Even more, I see no reason for scientists to cater to creationists. Peer reviewed papers are meant as a communication between scientists, not scientists and reality deniers. If creationists want to fly the banner of science it is up to them to bring their standards UP to the rest of science, not drag science down to their level.

Scientific answers to these questions work. They make predictions that we can test, and the theories we accept are the theories that work within this context. I think you are using a very narrow definition of "work". We are a very curious race (well, at least some of us). We want to know how the world around us operates. Scientific explanations work as an answer to these questions. Scientific experiments based on these answers produce results we can see for ourselves. As a side benefit, basic scientific knowledge also allows us to develop technologies that make our day to day lives a bit easier. However, I will go out on a limb and state that the number one benefit of science is that it sates our curiosity in a way that no religion has ever been able to do.