Creation, Evolution, and faith

Let's take a look at some categories: Things that are collectively agreed to exist within objective reality.
-there is always a scientific test that can be done, and has been done, to show that the idea in question actually exists within objective reality
-mountains, trees, animals, planets, stars, cars, computers, scientific theories... all manner of things that are the same for everyone, regardless of personal belief Things that are are collectively agreed to exist within subjective reality.
-there is never a scientific test that can be done to show that the idea in question actually exists within objective reality
-dreams, feelings, thoughts, imagination... all manner of things that are different for different people Things that are unknown to be objective or subjective.
-there is a scientific test that can be done, but doing the test is currently restricted so it cannot be done right now
-currently untestable scientific hypotheses, urban legends, crack-pot ideas, conspiracy theories... all manner of things that cannot currently be testedI would just like to point out that if you are acknowledging that God cannot be scientifically tested (not just can't-right-now, but actually cannot-ever). Then you are also acknowledging that God is exactly the same as all things humans have ever come into contact with and labelled as "Subjective". Which would lead us to believe that this God idea is different for different people... in which case there's not much point in trying to persuade others to accept your personal vision of what God does. Who cares? It's just your personal imagination anyway. There's certainly no point in trying to get other people to accept your personal God-idea as "correct" or "right" for anyone else.You could go ahead and imagine an alternate-reality which includes some sort of "supernatural realm" (again, something that would fit perfectly into the Subjective category) to help explain this anomaly. But adding more subjective ideas does not do much to help force a God idea into anything objective.

I don't think you understand, my category has nothing to do with what actually is "objective reality". That may be something that we can never fully understand.My category is about what we collectively agree to exist within objective reality. I tried to make it bigger in case you accidentally missed it.You cannot refute my category by simply saying you don't like it. I don't really care about what you like and don't like. There is a very simple, easy way to refute it, however. All you have to do is think of one, single idea that is "collectively agreed to exist within objective reality" that cannot be tested by science. I agree, it could. But it certainly isn't collectively agreed upon. In fact, most of the agreement is coming from your imagination. Most people cannot even collectively agree on what a "spiritual world" would actually contain... let alone whether or not one actually exists. Sounds a lot like active imaginations to me. "Objective" is defined by being the same regardless of different people's perspective. If so many different people have so many different perspectives of the "spiritual world"... how are you possibly calling it objective in any way?All you need is one idea to refute such a classification. Can you think of any single idea that is collectively agreed to be a part of objective reality, and yet cannot be tested by science?I don't think you can.
(Hint... "objective reality" is what science was invented to identify...)

"Many people" agree that the Christian afterlife exists as well.However, neither idea is collectively agreed to exist within objective reality.Is math truely objective?
Is math objective rules based upon subjective initial axioms?I do not claim to have the answers (I am not a mathematician). I just claim that the answer to such questions is not collectively agreed upon. In fact, I believe that the vast majority would agree that math is not "actually objective" and is more a set of objective regulations that forms from an initial set of subjective axioms.Like judicial laws. Laws are objective in the sense that we all (vast majority) agree to them and they make sense... but they're all based upon initially-agreed upon subjective axioms.

Then perhaps you could provide an example of something you think is "objective" (along these lines of popular use of the word) in mathematics that is not testable by the scientific method?If we're talking about "objective mathematics" as defined by the popular-general-mass-population meanings, I would guess that you mean something like "2 + 3 = 5" being objective.
But, within this context, "2 + 3 = 5" certainly is testable by means of the scientific method.Within mathematics, you can show the proof going back to first principles.
Using the scientific method, you can create a real-world, emprical experiment where you have 2 apples over here, 3 apples over there... and then move them together. You can then test, scientifically, that you have 5 apples.So, if you mean "objective" in a professional manner... others here have already shown the issues.
And, if you mean "objective" in a colloquial manner... then the scientific test can be done anyway.And again, we're left with the original statement:Can kbertsche identify a single idea that is collectively agreed to be a part of objective reality, and yet cannot be tested by science?For clarification... "collectively agreed to be a part of objective reality" is a way to say "is a known part of objective reality as apart from something that may or may not be a part of objective reality, but it's currently unknown either way".

Exactly. If such a thing happened... you would have an incredibly good point to make. However, last I checked, such a thing never happens... in the history of scientific checking... so it kinda reduces the impact of what you're attempting to say. Exactly. Professionally speaking, mathematical questions are based on "First Principles" of mathematics... which are not scientifically testable. They are, however, also not objective (professionally speaking). They are subjectively agreed upon rules from which to proceed (and things are then objective from that basis). With neither of us being mathematicians (I'm assuming you're not?) I don't think we can go much further down this road... if Rrhain happens to stumble over this conversation... perhaps he can correct any issues since he is a mathematician.However, if we move to colloquial-speak... then mathematical questions are "objective" (the way you explained the term). In which sense... the scientific tests can be carried out and they always (so far) come out in agreement. In fact, if we're using this colloquial-speak usage of the term "objective" to refer to mathematics... then the mathematical proofs going back to First Principles actually counts as scientific testing.But, if you insist on mixing the Professional usage of "objective" and "scientific test" with your defined Colloquial usage of "objective mathematics"... then yes, I agree that confusion occurs.

I know that I've always had a hard time explaining what I'm attempting to discuss with respect to this aspect.There is "objective reality".
There is "known to exist within objective reality".
There is "unknown to exist within objective reality".
There is "known to not exist within objective reality".In this thread, I'm trying to say there is always a scientific test for those things that fall into the "known to exist within objective reality" category and do not fall into either of the 2 following categories.Does that help at all? Or have I moved on to eating my legs instead of just my feet?

Yes, I agree with you.But I've covered both sides of the "significant disagreement within philosophy".They will either think mathematics are subjective (First Principles) and therefore we don't have an issue.Or they will think mathematics are objective... in which case they will have to show which aspects they claim to actually be objective and how they claim that to be the case. When such a claim is backed up, the scientific tests are easy to conduct. And, again, we don't have an issue.Unless you are able to show an aspect of mathematics, back up a claim for it being objective (not refer back to any subjectively assumed First Principles), and then ask me what scientific test can be done.So far, the only aspect we've tested is "2 + 3 = 5". It was my example of what I'm guessing you're talking about. And I showed you how a scientific test can be carried out to back up such a statement. With those basics scientifically covered... we can go up to multiplication, division... all higher-level functions that are derived from basic addition... they can all be brought back to scientifically testable addition.The only place to go from there is lower-level assumptions.
Things like assuming "a straight vertical line means 'one'"... which I think you'll have a hard time showing to be objective in any sense of the word.If all you mean to say is "some philosophers, in some areas of the world will disagree with me... and they really believe themselves"...Then I happily concede to such a... mundane point.
I don't really care what others think or believe, I care about what we can show to be true.

Let's not get too off-topic (although I'm interested to see your planned reply and see what you understand the current topic to be... )All this is going back to a statement I've made:At the bottom of Message 380: If you plan on "proving me wrong", please focus on this. I don't really care if mathematices turns out to be objective or subjective. I do care if mathematics turns out to be objective and there's no way to study such scientifically.If there exists such a thing in objective reality that cannot be tested scientifically, then there exists a "supernatural realm" within objective reality.The "supernatural realm" is purported to be an area of objective reality that cannot be tested scientifically. As far as I've been able to piece together from others promoting such a place to exist, anyway. Therefore, I am extremely interested if we can actually define "mathematics" to be equivalent to "supernatural realm".I don't think we can, but I am interested to see where this goes. Perhaps the vocabulary being used is simply... confusing.