Science doesn’t ‘disprove’ the supernatural. Science ignores it, because it’s not scientific.
The correct answer to someone who says, “I think God X exists” is to say, “Oh? Do you have a falsifiable test for that? If not, I really don’t care what you think. Next!”
The scientific method is partly a filter that allows us to ignore the unprovable and advance knowledge through hypothesis and experiment. A scientist has an equal amount of disinterest in the existence of God vs the existence of a green spaghetti monster that lives under my bed and that only I can see. Both are assertions made without fact and without a means to test for its truth. Therefore, bringing such a question before a scientist is just wasting his or her time.
There is no limit to the number of assertions that can be made about reality. Science limits itself to questioning only those that can be tested and falsified, and it uses those tests to build a framework for reality - a framework that is subject to change at any time should empirical evidence warrant it. But the only way it can possibly work is to completely ignore assertions that cannot be tested.
That doesn’t mean those assertions are false. It just means science has absolutely nothing to say about them. Go ahead and believe in whatever you want - just don’t bother scientists with it until you can come up with a test that can be falsified.
For an example of a falsifiable test, many religious people believe in the power of prayer. They think that if you pray for someone to beat cancer, you’re improving their odds. Well, that’s a testable claim. All we have to do is look at cancer remission rates between groups of athiests and groups of believers in the power of prayer. So far as I know, there has never been shown to be any kind of statistical correlation at all between prayer and real-world phenomenon. So that seems pretty conclusive. God may answer your prayers in the afterlife, but he’s not going to do squat for you on Earth.
No. Either there is something to enquire, which brings it in the realm of science, or there is either nothing to enquire about or it is impossible to enquire about.
In the latter cases you just have useless fantasies.
You have grown so confused about how science decides what is real that you know apparently hold the position that thoughts create reality.
Funnier than the Tooth Houri.
The fact that thinking and imagination is a real phenomenon lends no weight whatsoever that the thought is scientifically correct, or that it reflects reality in any way.
No. I do wish the nutso interpreters of the faith would.
Just as I’d like to never hear another word from the Bible thumpers who encourage gun rampages at Planned Parenthood. Even just the encouraging is bad enough–especially when it comes from fools with Presidential aspirations.
Sort of, except that science falsifies the “supernatural” where any claims are at odds with the premises of science.
If you create an alternate set of premises to allow for the supernatural, your dilemma is that nothing at all is testable–not even whether you exist to test anything. Further, any “inquiry” becomes completely unstructurable. Without the premises with which science starts inquiries, nothing at all can be known about anything at all.
In that nihilistic world, science and the supernatural are “separate.” In effect, you can have science or you can have no structure whatsoever. Generally speaking, the urge for a good bowel movement will knock the epistemologic nihilist off too comfortable a perch that nothing can be known for certain about anything.
All assertions which violate the premises of science are scientifically false, and they do not need to be separately tested using some sort of scientific experiment to make a scientific claim they are false.
Science discards as false the supernatural en bloc as a fundamental premise, requisite to even having science.
As to whether alternate epistemologic approaches consider them false, science has no interest in that discussion.
It’s a common point of confusion to think that because science “has nothing to say” about the supernatural, it does not consider it false. On the contrary, science has nothing to say about the supernatural because it discards it as false out of the box since the supernatural violates the starting premises of science for how we determine what is correct and what is incorrect about the way the world works.
If you read upthread, you’ll see the discussion about Islam going away started when I made the assertion that a good western education would make all religion go away, and John Mace asserted that religion would not be going away.
Boko Haram versus the west.
Given the ardent support here–including some of the mods–that science cannot falsify religious drivel, I am beginning to think John Mace may be right.
Still, for the western world in general, I think most religious beliefs are sliding toward Santa Claus–more of a Holiday Tradition than something for which you would blow yourself up.
I apologize for projecting stereotyped views onto you that you clearly do not hold. We are actually quite similar in mind given your self-description.
I only sought to reinforce that, on the scale of reason, specific religious claims (such as the Islamic traditional beliefs being discussed) have no basis for belief within a scientific paradigm. Moreover, defense of irrational religious mythology is curious among people of high intelligence (and seems to occur most when a particular religion is being discussed).
The voice of something very different from reason, indicating a complete inability to read what I actually said. I was ridiculing the notion that thoughts create reality, which your post implied.
You said that when the material mind of a person stops functioning, the ideas it contained cease to exist. You tried to leap from that to a claim that houris don’t exist, because (unstated) they are only in the mind, nowhere else.
Here’s the problem: you haven’t shown that houris are only in the mind and nowhere else. You assumed that as a premise, and then based an argument for it on that premise. Circular much?
Are thinking and imagination a fact? (I know, I’m being a devils assvocate:cool: but my understanding is that we know we have a brain, of some sort, where “thoughts” arise from…but dont know much else.)…but I mean Chief, what if all those thoughts about maidens and breasts and vaginas and penis etc…were NOT yours? Perhaps put there by…Islam…drawing you in? Or something else? How would you know? I was getting worried there for awhile:D
Section Maker:Jupe (Who needs to win an award of some kind for an unusual login name: what does it mean?)
Exactly so: It is possible that religious beliefs are actually revealed, spiritually, by a supernatural entity. Mohammed might have had the Koran narrated to him by an angel. There is no possible way for science to prove this didn’t happen.
Now, as an atheist, I reject the idea that this has happened. I believe there is no evidence to support the idea. But it’s just going way too far to claim that it’s disproven by science. Formally speaking, science isn’t even interested.
I have said that science science science science science science falsifies houris.
This is because they are obviously at odds with the premises of science. They are clearly only imagination since science easily shows that 90 foot tall creatures with human form are the product of imagination, and easily shows that penises rot away after we die. It also easily shows that consciousness requires the organic substrate of a living brain with active physiologic processes.
In summary, science falsifies houris.
Also, Tinkerbelle.
Peter Pan, too.
You may well cling to an epistemology that discards science and embraces houris along with Peter Pan and Tinkerbelle. In that case you are unable to falsify anything at all, including your own existence.
If that works for you, I recommend upgrading to a belief in the Tooth Houri, which I have created above. That way, if your kids die before they are sexually mature, they will have something to look forward to as well (although in that epistemology you will be unable to prove they even exist, since you will have discarded the premises of science).
This is not scientifically possible, because it violates natural law.
It is easily disproved to the satisfaction of science (see my suggestions for a specific experimental approach, above), which you continue to confuse with all other epistemologic approaches to truth.
You can choose to believe that the Tooth Houri was revealed to me by a supernatural entity. In doing so you would need to reject scientific premises that tell us how the world works, and in that case your epistemologic construct would not be able to prove anything at all.
That’s fine (albeit wrong scientifically).
The only sense in which science cannot falsify the supernatural is if science rejects its own premises. It does not do that, by definition.
As a mechanism to tempt you to reject science, I am going to add to the Tooth Houri a second set of breasts, so along with the double vagina you also get double the boobs. I will also throw in no boogers, while I am thinking about upgrades to entice the masses to accept my supernatural revelation.
I am curious how much greater than a non-zero value for the possibility she exists would you be willing to assign my Tooth Houri? Any other cool features I can tack on to help get you signed up? Perhaps Monty will pitch in with some Science Advice on increasing the possibility she exists.
That means that science assumes there are no houris, not that science falsifies houris.
You have entered into a circular argument: the premises of science support the premises of science. No surprise there, but it’s a shitten form of argument. It differs not a whit from “The Bible is the word of God, and it says so, right there in the Bible.”
No scientific measurement, experiment, observation, or calculation has ever falsified the existence of houris.
Your understanding of the philosophy of science is severely wanting.
Science absolutely does start with assumptions. It is a paradigm which has proven quite useful (with the exception of finding a cure for my current sore throat). I suggest the main practical difference between the scientific paradigm and a plea to external “authority” is that, on average, when science proves or falsifies, a useful and predictable outcome results. This is why we tend to bundle up when it’s cold instead of relying on an authority that reassures us we will never be cold if we just believe.
I suggest you have become more or less hopelessly confused about the difference between science and a philosophic approach to epistemology.
You continue to advance epistemologic arguments that consider what is “falsifiable” instead of what science falsifies. (And as an aside, your atheism betrays the fact that your personal epistemologic approach most likely accepts the premises science uses.)
There may be a “philosophy of science” within the general discussion of whether and how we know anything at all. We call that kind of philosophic discussion “epistomology” for shorthand.
A discussion of whether or not science itself falsifies something is a discussion of the scientific approach, and as I have repeatedly pointed out, science does start with certain premises. It also develops a certain approach based on those premises, and it then–to the satisfaction of science–proves or disproves postulates.
Out of the gate, science falsifies all superstitions and make-believe that are at odds with what we have learned about how the world works.
You can object to that epistemologically but not scientifically. You can even lay claim philosophically that science is not supreme as a mechanism by which to find truth. That kind of epistemologic power grab has left many a philosopher employed despite contributing nothing of value to our daily lives.
Of course, an epistemologic rejection of the scientific approach to knowledge (including accepting the fundamental premises with which science starts) leaves one unable to figure out if anything at all exists, including this post you are reading, the computer upon which it is displayed, and the physiologic system interpreting the display. In short, you don’t even know if you are picking your own nose.
Philosophers love that sort of mental masturbation, and throughout history have indulged themselves in the logical absurdities which result from not being able to prove anything at all. And it’s fun in the sixth grade or so, when you start learning “why” answers at a greater depth than can be grasped by a toddler.
In recent centuries, I think science is winning the epistemologic battle, in part because the arbitrary acceptance of scientific premises has such practical value. We no longer have to imagine flitting off on a night ride to Jerusalem; we can remote in with television or invent machines that will actually fly us there. Etcetera.
When you reject philosophically the scientific approach, it’s perfectly fine to advance a possible “existence” for my Tooth Houri (which I will now upgrade to a being that also gives its master a fantastic post-coital massage as yet another incentive for rejecting science).
But as you have found in your own quest for what to believe, you are immediately caught between the rock of scientifically-proven reality and the hard place of defending belief in nonsense. Beyond the Land of Science lie Tooth Houris but also demons–in short, all the products of human imagination, some more well thought-out than others. Where they are at odds with scientific premises, science falsifies them, even if some alternate epistemologic schema does not.
So you can have science as your paradigm and reject the Tooth Houri, or…
You can have an epistemologic paradigm that rejects all starting assumptions. This would leave you with an epistemologically non-falsfiable Tooth Houri, but with her would come Peter Pan, Tinkerbelle, magic and demons. (Still tempting, I know, what with the double vaginas and double breasts.) It would also leave you with not knowing if you yourself even exist.
You just can’t have both science and make-believe. If you are really determined to choose the Tooth Houri, I can upgrade her some more for you. Just let me know what other features you would like to be philosophically non-falsifiable.
