two important questions for Servant

Your theory simply declares, without evidence, that God is the engine behind speciation. Schraf called this theistic evolution, and noted that it isn't science because your explanations are based upon faith rather than evidence. That doesn't make you wrong, but it does mean your views are not scientific.This is from your Message 47: I don't know about illogical, but certainly unnecessary. Why would you want to put God on a scientific footing? If there were scientific evidence for God then where would be the need for faith? If there were scientific evidence for God we would be all be believers, but out of scientific imperative, not out of faith. Is that what you want? Your theory reduces to, "Whatever we find, that's what God did."--Percy

Your theory proposes a supernatural mechanism, God. This means your theory is not scientific. This is how the discussion got around to the falsifiability of God, because you need evidence for your proposed mechanism.Even aside from falsifiability, if God is a fact as you implied in Message 89 then you must have evidence of this fact in the form of observations. But as I asked previously, do you really want God to be an issue of evidence rather than faith, and even further, to be subject to falsifiability?By the way, facts *are* falsifiable. There is nothing sacrosanct about facts. Facts are just data gathered by people, who are not infallible. For example, as anyone who has gathered data in classroom experiments can attest, there are always those data points that have to be thrown out as experimental error. Sources of potential error are multitudenous, from reading a ruler or timepiece wrong to data entry errors to fluke happenstance to poor experimental procedure and on and on.The fallible nature of both theory *and* facts is why replicability is required in science. One scientist's results are intriguing, but they only become accepted after being replicated by other scientists, thereby confirming the facts. Which though more certain now, are still not 100% certain. Nothing is ever that certain in science.--Percy Fix spelling. --Percy[This message has been edited by Percy, 04-23-2004]

I wouldn't say that. In order for your proposal to be scientific, you must have evidence for your mechanism, which is God. Providing evidence of God must be part and parcel of your proposed theory.--Percy

There's no such rule. All evidence is acceptable. Perhaps you're thinking of Schraf's Message 51, where she says: She only says supernatural explanations are not acceptable, and nothing about evidence. Of course all properly gathered evidence is acceptable. But Schraf's statement contains the implicit assumption that supernatural explanations have no evidence. Evidence is anything apparent to us, directly or indirectly, through the five senses. So ironically, as soon as something supernatural can be perceived, it is no longer supernatural. There are no such rules here. However, we do try to keep topics in the right forum, and if this is something you'd like to delve into in detail then a thread about whether the supernatural is scientific probably belongs in Is It Science?. Scientifically, there is currently only one. Evolution is the only currently accepted explanation for speciation. If you want to open consideration up to all possibilities, scientific and non-scientific, then there are far more than two, for you have to consider the beliefs of all religions, and I guess of all dreamers and fantasy writers, too.Addressing this subthread's title, The only answer allowed is, there are no artificial limits placed upon allowable answers within science. But science *does* have a definition, and to be scientific something must have evidence, be replicable, and be falsifiable. If you want your proposal to be considered scientific, then you need evidence for your proposed mechanism, God.--Percy

I couldn't find any rules that anyone posted in the thread, so I assumed you were referring to forum rules. I don't think Quetzal ever posted to this thread, so this is something he posted in another thread?Anyway, if you have a different opinion about the rules of science or scientific evidence, you could discuss it in Is It Science?.--Percy

Right. But there is no "one-and-only-one" statement of the rules of evidence for science, so I don't feel I can discuss this without seeing the statement of the rules that you're talking about. Unfortunately, Quetzal didn't post to Age Correlations and an Old Earth, either, so I still haven't seen these rules.Since the subject of supernatural evidence has come up, my guess is that one of the rules you're referring to says that the evidence must be from the natural world, in other words, that it be discernable either directly by way of one or more of our five senses, or indirectly through instruments like microscopes and thermometers. Any such evidence would be valid, even if the phenomenon under study was God. Is this the rule you're thinking of?--Percy