Societies don't have to be secular to be modern

[Viking]

Scientists cannot prove their claims. They can only disprove them.

That's not quite true.

Some hypothesis are not unable to be proven, such as evolution.  Other claims however can be positively proven.  We have proof that certain drugs cause certain effects.  We have proof that atomic weapons work.

No.

We do not know that drugs cause certain effects, we know that we have no other good reason to explain what happens after the drugs are taken.
We do not know that nuclear bombs explode, we just know of nothing which can cause the explosion that happens when we drop the bomb.
We do not know that evolution happens, we just don't have any other theory which explains all the observations of biology.

You are still getting science the wrong way round.

[Berkut]

I would say that the body of knowledge that we consider to be "correct" in science is in fact whatever happesn to be the "best theory at the moment". Obviously, this is a process however, so what is the "best" theory is often up for debate. 

All things "in the canon" in science are presumed to be at least potentially false, and this is the key difference between science and religion, where the opposite is true.

But under no cases is the "best" theory one that is based on some scientist just making something up for which there was no evidence.

Incorrect, in the case of xenobiology.

I don't think so - first of all, I would dispute that there is currently an accepted "best" theory on xenobiology - although there are certainly lots of hypothesis out there.

Those hypothesis however, are not based on someone just making something up - they are based on data and evidence collected from a variety of sources.

There is no direct evidence of life existing on other planets*, but there is certainly plenty of evidence that it could - the fact that it exists on THIS planet is rather suggestive, for example. We study life at it exist in extermely hostile earth environments, as another example. Scientists run experiments trying to re-crate a variety of environments under which life could arise. That is all evidence.


*apparently there are some scientists who believe that the Mars tests were not nearly as conclusive about the lack of evidence for life there as was reported. I have no real idea how credible that is though.

[Viking]

That distinction makes ALLTHE DIFFERENCE. Faith does not have a routine for error correction. Science does. That makes the two things fundamentally different.

I agree.  But that difference does not make one irrational for having faith.

For God of the Gaps sake. Redefining the question is not a counter argument!

[Viking]

Anything in the bible can be a non litteral and non accurate recording of events? How do you know what to believe then? Anything can be wrong or untrue. How do you know what to have faith in?

Well that's the challenging part then isn't it. 

I don't have all the answers.

OK, so much for you claiming that Religion has science and reason then?

[Malthus]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Ultimately, the truth or falsity of the claims of any moral or philosophical system comes down to intuition, not scientific disproof.

Indeed the very terms "true" and "false" are not really appropriate in this context. If I am not a utilitarian, is utilitarianism "false"?

Similarly, I am not a Buddhist. Can I "disprove" that life is, ultimately, full of suffering caused by desire?

[Viking]

The fundamental problem with that is that all of this was assumed to be literally true at some point. The silly stories are stop being literal and become symbolic when they are proven impossible or highly implausible. The fact that until disproven the bible stores are assumed to be literal and when disproven assumed to be symbolic. This is just like adding epicycles to ptolmaeic orbits.

Perhaps they were originally intended to be symbolic.  The original Christians didn't seem too concerned all their gospels were very very different.  They seem more concerned with the symbology of what they are discussing.  Then later we began to pull our hair out over whether Jesus was really born in Bethlehem or Nazareth or whether a person named Joseph ever actually lived or whether they actually went to Egypt and so forth.

I also doubt the Jews in Babylon really knew or cared whether or not Joshua really did destroy Jericho or not.

But in any case the Bible is only useful to me taken symbolicly and only marginally useful taken as a source of historical events.

That's what happens when you use Reason in Religion. It all gets very confusing and stupid.

[Neil]

I just find it odd that Berk et all get start ranting about how irrational it is to believe in something that is not proven when that happens in the scientific field as well.

I think the advantage that science has in this regard is predictability.  Some scientific theories are ferociously strong, like gravity, evolution, the atomic theory and so on.  You can use them to calculate the result of an action, and then verify it experimentally.  Religious belief doesn't have that feature.

[DisturbedPervert]

Interview with Karl-Heinz Ohlig
Muhammad as a Christological Honorific Title

This guy is gonna get himself killed

[Barrister]

We do not know that drugs cause certain effects, we know that we have no other good reason to explain what happens after the drugs are taken.

No, generally we have excellent explanations of the exact metabolic pathway that certain drugs effect.

We do not know that nuclear bombs explode, we just know of nothing which can cause the explosion that happens when we drop the bomb.

No, we know exactly what happens in a nuclear bomb.

We do not know that evolution happens, we just don't have any theory which explains all the observations of biology.

Evolution, due to the very long-time scale, is not able to be "proven" like some other areas of science, and thus is stuck with the label of "theory".  But just because some areas are not able to be conclusively tested doesn't mean that all of science is that way.

I have a science degree.  Mine is in geology.  Certain areas of geology are proven, because they can be replicated in a lab.  Other areas are not, given the enormous time scales involved.

[Viking]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Ultimately, the truth or falsity of the claims of any moral or philosophical system comes down to intuition, not scientific disproof.

Indeed the very terms "true" and "false" are not really appropriate in this context. If I am not a utilitarian, is utilitarianism "false"?

Similarly, I am not a Buddhist. Can I "disprove" that life is, ultimately, full of suffering caused by desire?

I have no problems with anything you wrote here above. So you agree that the truth or falsity of moral or philosophical claims is unrelated to the claims of religion about their truthiness?

[Pat]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Ultimately, the truth or falsity of the claims of any moral or philosophical system comes down to intuition, not scientific disproof.

Indeed the very terms "true" and "false" are not really appropriate in this context. If I am not a utilitarian, is utilitarianism "false"?

Similarly, I am not a Buddhist. Can I "disprove" that life is, ultimately, full of suffering caused by desire?

I, nor anyone else on my side of the argument here I believe, have any quarrel with viewing religion as no more than moral philosophy. But I doubt the religious people would be content with that.

[Barrister]

Anything in the bible can be a non litteral and non accurate recording of events? How do you know what to believe then? Anything can be wrong or untrue. How do you know what to have faith in?

Well that's the challenging part then isn't it. 

I don't have all the answers.

OK, so much for you claiming that Religion has science and reason then?

How so?

[grumbler]

But there is evidence that life exists, and hence it is certainly an interesting scientific endeavor to try to understand how it might exist elsewhere, and to even create theories to explain why life exists here, and what that might mean for its existence elsewhere.

And this is why there is theoretical science at all, even when there is no evidence; because it is possible to conduct science in the lack of evidence; it just cannot progress very far.

I would not agree that there is no evidence that life exists elsewhere - the fact that it exists here is evidence that it might exist elsewhere.

You may believe this, but yours is an unscientific assertion; more like religion than science.  Life's existence anywhere isn't dependent on its existence "here" nor is life present "here" saying anything about its existence elsewhere.

In fact, probably the most fundamental question in science is "do the scientific conclusions we draw apply universally?  Or does physics itself change over the universe?"

So they make hypothesis like "maybe life exists on Mars!' and then they test them. Lately by sending probes to Mars, and prior to that by studying meteorites that came from Mars. So there is plenty of evidence to be studied, even if a conclusion is still beyond us.

There is no evidence of life off this planet, though there is evidence for lack of lack.  Xenobiology isn't about testing for life on moon rocks, or whatever, though.  It is a purely theoretical science right now.

[Malthus]

But they say nothing about the truth or falsity of the religion claims.

Ultimately, the truth or falsity of the claims of any moral or philosophical system comes down to intuition, not scientific disproof.

Indeed the very terms "true" and "false" are not really appropriate in this context. If I am not a utilitarian, is utilitarianism "false"?

Similarly, I am not a Buddhist. Can I "disprove" that life is, ultimately, full of suffering caused by desire?

I have no problems with anything you wrote here above. So you agree that the truth or falsity of moral or philosophical claims is unrelated to the claims of religion about their truthiness?

I don't know what you mean by "truthiness".

[Viking]

No, generally we have excellent explanations of the exact metabolic pathway that certain drugs effect.

No, we know exactly what happens in a nuclear bomb.

Evolution, due to the very long-time scale, is not able to be "proven" like some other areas of science, and thus is stuck with the label of "theory".  But just because some areas are not able to be conclusively tested doesn't mean that all of science is that way.

I have a science degree.  Mine is in geology.  Certain areas of geology are proven, because they can be replicated in a lab.  Other areas are not, given the enormous time scales involved.

All of these are Theory. Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory and then come back.