Two types of science

It was only an opening post, intended to be brief and readable. Your questions allow me to go into more detail about my position. I'm not saying that anything that is only observable by one human sense cannot be scientific, I'm saying that if something is observable by only one human sense, and ALSO involves millions of years in the past, hundreds of light-years away, or conflicts with the basics of Christianity or U.S. foundings, then it may become too vague to be thoroughly enough analyzed by the scientific method. Testability and falsifiability are the two key words. They were established only to shout down the concept of Intelligent Design, so they should apply to other forms of science as well. "Reasonable doubt"? Who is doing the reasoning? We'll be exploring that as the thread moves along. Then you should be able to have lots of fun showing me just how that knowledge is tested, and how it could be falsified. I just went to the Intelligent Design forum here, and randomly picked out three topics, and before getting very far, (6 or 7 posts) the term "Wedge Document" came up in two of them. It's seldom possible to discuss Intelligent Design without the Wedge Document becoming front and center to the whole discussion. What Weinberg said about "weakening the hold of religion" is very comparable to the wedge document, actually even more of an issue with science than the wedge document is to Intelligent Design, or any non-naturalistic worldview. I'll briefly compare them, to make that clear.There seem to be slightly different wordings of what Steven Weinberg said, but they all pretty much say the same thing; (he probably said it several times)

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I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That's a good thing.

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Steven Weinberg - I think one of the great historical...The Wedge Document was written by one man, Phillip Johnson, a lawyer, not a scientist. Weinberg is, of course, an award winning scientist. There's no indication that Intelligent Design, has, or possibly could, succeed with its "wedge strategy" as it described. Yet there's every indication that weakening the hold of religion really is a priority of much of the scientific community. The evidence is in the fact that there is so much metaphysical science going on in universities and even high school textbooks today.

Could you give us some examples please?

This should have been answered for you in message 16. As one against many, I'm not going down rabbit trails - searches for cosmological papers. It would be more appropriate for you to show me how any detailed conclusion about something outside our solar system is testable or falsifiable, by means other than repetitive study by telescope. I DID think of it myself, but since Intelligent Design is declared not science because it doesn't measure up to the rigors of the scientific method, or is too vague to be tested or falsified, then it's legitimate to inquire if other things have that same problem. Yes, I've been seeing them lately in other threads that I've participated in. I'm told that if we didn’t believe in a billions of year old earth, we wouldn't be able to explore for oil. If we didn't believe in common ancestor atheism, we wouldn't be able to cure disease, etc. Claims like this are everywhere in todays science. Years ago on another forum, someone actually told me that if we didn't believe in a billions of year old earth, we wouldn't be able to purify and distribute clean water! Yes, actual science, and metaphysical science. Metaphysical being the kind that can't meet the standards that were set for ID, the kind that generally interests no one except atheists, the kind that seems to only have one purpose, to "weaken the hold of religion". Yes again, the conspiracy to try to sweep Weinberg's remark under the rug, as if it's irrelevant to what's going on today. There is evidence that it's a major desire of today’s scientific community and its followers. The "hash" I've made of it all fits together, if I'm permitted to present it. That's the reason I couldn't allow my o/p to be more narrowly focused. I don't need to do that, I'm formulating a criteria solely by what I see on forums such as these, combined with what I see in the news, and writings by those on both sides of the creation/evolution controversy.

Or not. So it would be sensible in any given case to find out whether it is or not, rather than saying "this is a proposition that can most easily be expressed in light-years rather than inches, and it's about something that I can't smell, so it may be too vague to be thoroughly enough analyzed by the scientific method", and leaving it at that. While I condemn the knavish chicanery of evolutionists in doing this, I have to feel a sneaking admiration for their ability to travel backwards in time. Creationists can't do that.

Of your list, I prefer "public opinion" the most. (Public opinion is also very important in how U.S. founders intended for the U.S. to be governed) The public can get its knowledge from several sources, such as;Perception
Reason
Introspection
Memory
Testimony Here is where that list comes from, with a paragraph of detail about each one.So you'll disregard all that and go with only one thing, science, being reported to you by a special interest, led by the National Academy of Science, (about 93% of whom are atheists). Here’s what another link has to say about knowledge;

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How can we determine which facts are true? As human beings living in the 21st Century we are surrounded by a wealth of information but not all of it is trustworthy, so we must find a way to double check fact-claims. We must learn some-how to screen out the fictions but let in the facts. On what criteria can we decide what are facts and what are false claims?

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How can we determine which facts are important? However, it is not enough to simply determine which facts are true, we must also consider which facts are useful. A correct catalogue of the size and shape of every blade of grass on my lawn may well be factually true but it will not be as useful as knowing that my lawn is on fire and about to engulf my house. Given the overwhelming number of facts available to us, what criteria can we use for deciding what is more important, what less?

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More detail on all this later, as it's requested, but it's immediately clear that knowledge other than science goes far deeper than "Bible stories" as I was told in another thread. To show that there's a difference between Bible stories and Christian teachings, here's a brief quote from a daily devotion I receive by email, called "Word For Today". This came to me two days after I proposed this thread;

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While the Bible clearly teaches self-worth, it also denounces self-interest. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He said that we were to love God with all our hearts, and love others with the same concern that we show for ourselves (See Mk 12:30-31). When we obsess over ourselves, we lose the meaning of life, which is to love and serve God, and love and serve our neighbors. In a 2003 report, Hardwired to Connect, thirty-three research scientists discovered that we are biologically primed to find meaning through relationships. Chuck Colson said: After nearly eight decades of living, I can vouch for this. My single greatest joy is giving myself to others and seeing them grow in return. You cannot discover that without commitment. I first learned it by watching my parents care for my dying grandparents in our home...I later saw it in the Marine Corps. You cannot command forty-five men to go into combat, as I was trained to do, if you aren’t committed to one another. You are going to die if the man next to you does not cover your back...By abandoning commitment, our narcissistic culture has lost the one thing it desperately seeks: happiness. Without commitment, our individual lives will be barren and sterile. Without commitment, our lives will lack meaning and purpose. After all, if nothing is worth dying for, then nothing is worth living for. Jesus taught that the only way to live abundantly is to die to self-interest and give yourself fully to God, and to those who need what God has given you.

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Concerning the part I bolded, I wonder if those 33 research scientists lost their jobs? Possibly not, but one thing's for sure, those findings never will make it anywhere near a science textbook, because it could clash with what atheist prophet Dawkins said about selfish genes. I don't think Chuck Colson is a scientist, does that mean we should completely disregard what he said?

Yeah, how can we reach conclusions by means other than looking at all the available evidence? He's got us there. After all no-one's ever smelled the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, so it probably doesn't exist.

No it couldn't. But perhaps we should stick to the epistemology here, if you don't understand Dawkins I guess that would be a completely different topic.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Here is some more detail for you. William Dembski is a mathematician. While he doesn't directly apply the following to anything in particular, it shows anyone with an open mind that increased complexity can increase astronomically the improbability that something can happen without purpose, without any planning for future function;

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Probability can be viewed as a form of complexity. To see this, consider the combination lock. The more possible combinations of the lock, the more complex the mechanism, and, correspondingly, the more improbable that the mechanism can be opened by chance. For instance, a combination lock whose dial is numbered from 0 to 39 and that must be turned in three alternating directions will have 64,000 possible combinations. This number gives a measure of complexity for the combination lock but also corresponds to a 1 in 64,000 probability of the lock being opened by chance (assuming zero prior knowledge of the lock combination). A more complicated combination lock whose dial is numbered from 0 to 99 and which must be turned in five alternating directions will have 10,000,000,000 (ten billion) possible combinations and and thus a 1 in ten billion probability of being opened by chance. Complexity and probability therefore vary inversely: the greater the complexity, the smaller the probability.

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The 5 direction, 0 to 99 lock isn't billions of times more complex than the 3 direction, 0 to 39 lock. Other than having a few more moving parts, it's virtually identical. But it helps show that recent biological discoveries like DNA, the bacterial flagellum, etc. have less probability of falling together by purposeless natural processes. This means nothing of course, to naturalists. But they're ignoring another source of knowledge, and it isn't a Bible story.

No.---In general, it should be pointed out that math per se can't be a source of knowledge about the universe, just about math. The question of whether a particular bit of math models some particular bit of the universe is, can you guess what sort of question ... that's right, a scientific one.

Public opinion has no role in science.

I guess you never did understand what Dawkins meant by "selfish genes." But thanks for the laughs.

You don't care whether scientists are atheists or not. In reality, you only care that they come up with conclusions that dispute your religious beliefs.From your quote: From a list of definitions I put together many years ago:

Fact: when an observation is confirmed repeatedly and by many independent and competent observers, it can become a fact.

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Truth: This is a word best avoided entirely in physics [and science] except when placed in quotes, or with careful qualification. Its colloquial use has so many shades of meaning from ‘it seems to be correct’ to the absolute truths claimed by religion, that it’s use causes nothing but misunderstanding. Someone once said "Science seeks proximate (approximate) truths." Others speak of provisional or tentative truths. Certainly science claims no final or absolute truths. Source

From this, we see that facts are observations that can be confirmed by others and "truth" has no role in science. Theory! That's what we use to organize and explain facts!As Heinlein noted:

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Piling up facts is not science--science is facts-and-theories. Facts alone have limited use and lack meaning: a valid theory organizes them into far greater usefulness.

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A powerful theory not only embraces old facts and new but also discloses unsuspected facts [Heinlein 1980:480-481].

And more from my definitions:

Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses. Theories do not grow up to be laws. Theories explain laws.

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Theory: A scientifically testable general principle or body of principles offered to explain observed phenomena. In scientific usage, a theory is distinct from a hypothesis (or conjecture) that is proposed to explain previously observed phenomena. For a hypothesis to rise to the level of theory, it must predict the existence of new phenomena that are subsequently observed. A theory can be overturned if new phenomena are observed that directly contradict the theory. [Source]

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When a scientific theory has a long history of being supported by verifiable evidence, it is appropriate to speak about "acceptance" of (not "belief" in) the theory; or we can say that we have "confidence" (not "faith") in the theory. It is the dependence on verifiable data and the capability of testing that distinguish scientific theories from matters of faith.

So, to answer your question about which facts are true and which are useful--we don't use either term in science. Rather we ask, does a theory explain the relevant facts? All of the relevant facts? Are there any facts that contradict the theory, or as we say in science, disprove it?The problem creationists have is that the facts are not on their side, and the theories explaining those facts contradict religious beliefs. This is why creationists are trying to dispute the definitions used by scientists, and are trying to say things like, "They're both theories."In other words, creationists have to distort science to try and make it come out as they want. That is why creation "science" was invented in the 1980s--to provide a different kind of "science," one that made things come out as creationists wanted.Bah!

Then it is a good thing that no one, except creationists looking for a straw man, posits that DNA, the flagellum or any other biologic object just "fell" together by any process at all. Poof is only an explanation in religion. It does not work in evolution. There are always precursors, plenty of them, over more time than your religious fantasies wish had occurred. Edited by AZPaul3, : oops

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It was only an opening post, intended to be brief and readable. Your questions allow me to go into more detail about my position. I'm not saying that anything that is only observable by one human sense cannot be scientific, I'm saying that if something is observable by only one human sense, and ALSO involves millions of years in the past, hundreds of light-years away, or conflicts with the basics of Christianity or U.S. foundings, then it may become too vague to be thoroughly enough analyzed by the scientific method.

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Marc, you're really making your agenda obvious. There's nothing about conflicting with "Christian" beliefs or the "Christian" Right's version of American origins that would make any conclusion "vague".

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Testability and falsifiability are the two key words. They were established only to shout down the concept of Intelligent Design, so they should apply to other forms of science as well.

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Of course, testability goes back to the origins of modern science, and falsifiability was given prominence by Karl Popper who published it in 1934. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. English publication of that work was in 1959, and even that date is well before the Intelligent Design movement gained any sort of prominence.

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I just went to the Intelligent Design forum here, and randomly picked out three topics, and before getting very far, (6 or 7 posts) the term "Wedge Document" came up in two of them. It's seldom possible to discuss Intelligent Design without the Wedge Document becoming front and center to the whole discussion. What Weinberg said about "weakening the hold of religion" is very comparable to the wedge document, actually even more of an issue with science than the wedge document is to Intelligent Design, or any non-naturalistic worldview. I'll briefly compare them, to make that clear.

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That would be a pretty difficult thing to show.

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There seem to be slightly different wordings of what Steven Weinberg said, but they all pretty much say the same thing; (he probably said it several times)

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I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That's a good thing.

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Steven Weinberg - I think one of the great historical...

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So, an individual says that science has weakened the hold of religion and describes that as a good thing. He does not suggest that weakening the hold of religion is or even should be a goal of science. He has no more than his prestige to support him - and there are many religious scientists who would oppose him. So your evidence of any "problem" in science is pretty damn weak.

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The Wedge Document was written by one man, Phillip Johnson, a lawyer, not a scientist. Weinberg is, of course, an award winning scientist.

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Johnson's scientific credentials are hardly relevant His position as the leader of the Intelligent Design movement at that time would seem rather more important. Also the fact that the Wedge Document was written as an official document of the branch of the Discovery Institute that is the ore of the ID movement, describing it's aims.

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here's no indication that Intelligent Design, has, or possibly could, succeed with its "wedge strategy" as it described.

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That the ID movement would likely fail in its strategy hardly indicates that they were lying about their objectives. And indeed the fact that when the strategy failed, they settled for what the Wedge Document calls "indoctrination" rather than following the path of genuine science only indicates that they were MORE dedicated to their objectives than they were honesty.

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Yet there's every indication that weakening the hold of religion really is a priority of much of the scientific community. The evidence is in the fact that there is so much metaphysical science going on in universities and even high school textbooks today.

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I guess that - just like the last time a creationist raised the idea of "metaphysical science" here - it really is just a code for "science creationists refuse to accept."

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Here is some more detail for you. William Dembski is a mathematician. While he doesn't directly apply the following to anything in particular, it shows anyone with an open mind that increased complexity can increase astronomically the improbability that something can happen without purpose, without any planning for future function;

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Dembski is a creationist, and a leading light in the Intelligent Design movement. Odd how you forgot to mention that.Dembski's argument deals only with purely random assembly. We know that evolution does much better than that - and so does Dembski. So your whole point is a a strawman when talking about any supposed product of evolution.