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Author Topic:   Inductive Atheism
ZenMonkey
Member (Idle past 4501 days)
Posts: 428
From: Portland, OR USA
Joined: 09-25-2009


Message 12 of 536 (604381)
02-11-2011 4:42 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by slevesque
02-11-2011 1:48 PM


Re: Inductive Atheism
slevesque writes:
Science works primarily works on the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent, that is:
Hypothesis A predicts B
B is oberved
Therefore A is true.
I need to go back and read the rest of this thread more carefully, but I am compelled to point out right away that this is wrong. Remember that science works by falsification. Thus, what you're looking for is the contrapositive:
Hypothesis A predicts B.
If B is NOT observed, then A is NOT true. (Or at least A is much less likely to be true than you thought, depending on how necessary B is.)
If B is observed, then A is still at least possible, if not more likely than it was before.
No logical fallacy there. You are correct in saying that you can't PROVE hypothesis A is true. But that's not a problem for science, and no-one should ever say that you can prove something in science. All science does - and this is quite a lot, actually - is to demonstrate that hypothesis A is the best hypothesis at the moment.
The explanatory power and likelihood of hypothesis A being true increases every time it allows you to predict not only B, but C and D as well. This is another way of saying that hypothesis A has to keep passing the parsimony test - is it the hypothesis that explains the most evidence and is contradicted by the least evidence? Eventually you get to a point where A has held up so well under testing that to withhold consent to it being true is just intellectually perverse. At that point, you have a theory. But it remains a principle of science that any hypothesis or theory is always tentative, and something can always come around to force it to be reconsidered.
That's how it works.

I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon
What's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.
-Steven Dutch
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. - John Stuart Mill

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by slevesque, posted 02-11-2011 1:48 PM slevesque has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by slevesque, posted 02-11-2011 4:58 PM ZenMonkey has not replied

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