Pauline writes:
quote:
Some but not all atheists declare science to be the ultimate authority.
Really? Who? Can you give me one name? I don't know any atheists who claim science to be the ultimate authority.
After all, one of the big points about science is that it is quite likely that everything you think you know about everything is wrong. That's how science progresses: You make observations that seem to contradict prediction. You devise tests to make the observations more accurate and possibly come up with something completely new due to the fact that you just proved something to be wrong.
It's why we went from Aristotelian to Newtonian to Einsteinian mechanics.
How do you justify a claim of "science is the ultimate authority" when the very nature of science is to claim that it is not authoritative? The best that we can ever hope for from science is that our model is accurate and consistent with known observations.
Again with the kinematics. Newtonian physics is wrong. At every level. However, the reason we still teach it is that for everyday scenarios, the error term is so small that it requires extremely sensitive equipment in order to detect it.
That doesn't change the fact that it is wrong. No matter what it is that we find, that doesn't change the observations that we've made.
The closest we can come to "authoritarianism" in science is the insistence that observations are real and thus must be accounted for. When we switched from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics, objects didn't suddenly move forever rather than coming to rest. Instead, we came to the realization that the reason why they come to rest is not because rest is the "natural state" of objects but rather that there is a force, friction, that is bringing the object to rest. When Newton was working on his theories of gravitation, apples did not suddenly hover in mid-air waiting for him to figure it out so they could start moving the way he said.
No, observations are always there. They are the bare facts. Anything new you come up with has to take them into account and explain them. It may be that there was something we couldn't see that was involved and thus, our understanding was wrong, but that doesn't mean that the observation was false: Just that the description of what happened needs to be changed.
quote:
Prepare to answer this, those of you who hold science as the ultimate authority.
Again, just who are these people? I don't know a single person who claims science is the ultimate authority. They all know that science specifically insists that it isn't authoritative, that it will always be lacking in completeness due to the fact that we cannnot observe everything.
quote:
although certain atheists place science under this category. So, for those of you who do count science as the ultimate authority: why is that? For those atheists who don't, why is it not?
Who? Who are these people who claim science is the ultimate authority? Can we get one name?
quote:
In light of this, it seems to me that this 'circular reasoning logical fallacy' though certainly valuable intrinsically, is being misused by atheists as a ad-hominem tool on most atheist-christian debate arenas for neither is it well thought out by them nor is it applicable to a Christian worldview.
It seems to me that you are using an argument of false equivalency as an ad hominem tool against atheists.
Rrhain
Thank you for your submission to
Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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