I have made a personal resolution that I will no longer attempt to define things any more stringently than the conversation demands. That is usually not very stringently. And if, as it is, we happen to exclude certain things we’d like to include or include things we’d like to exclude, then so be it.
So, barring that, a definition of religion. I’d say: a worldview or limited worldview (one that only applies to a certain sphere of existence, you might say) which includes faith as a means of gaining knowledge. And now I would say that faith is knowledge gained from incomplete incomplete induction, which is to say, knowledge that someone has that, even granting incomplete induction as a form of knowledge, still doesn’t follow. I’m afraid I don’t want to delve much deeper than that, and I am sure to wobble and veer in all sorts of directions on religion and faith, mainly because I do not myself recognize that those words apply to me, so it is hard for me to pin them down. I tend to say all sorts of silly things regarding religion and faith (among other topics) because it is hard for me to associate myself with them in the first place.
But, my beef remains with a notion of science which asserts that it never proves anything. I feel this borders on religion, if not being a religion itself. I think the only way you can accept that science never proves anything is if:
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You accept, within your science, that an external world exists independent of perception (I think the boldest philosophical statement there can possibly be, but it is the next bit that troubles me, not the previous one) that has facts, which is to say, truth is immanent or transcendent.
(if this is not the case, then science can prove all sorts of things, even given contrary evidence)
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You accept that math is analytically a priori true, and accept Hume’s Fork (which asserts a distinction between necessarily true things like math and contingently true things like empirical propositions) (I don’t want to mess with synthetic a priori propositions here, though I suppose I could be motivated to do so; if I were to do so, it would necessarily alter 3).
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You accept that analytical a priori statements cannot “say” anything about the world (else they lose their status of “absolutely certain”)(here is where the synthetic a priori can come in; again, my knowledge of Kant and subsequent Kantians is sparse, so I’d rather not tread here if I don’t have to, and I’m sure there is plenty to argue here without it!)
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That the best scientific theories are framed in the form of mathematical statements with additional contingencies thrown in (which correspond to empirical statements now); and, that they present themselves in such a way that if they were wrong, the act of testing the theory could indicate that.
(this is, I think, a good way to state that scientific theories must be falsifiable)
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That science can also never prove something false just like it can never prove anything true.
I think (5) is absolutely necessary from a logical perspective, and serves (to me) to make the nonsense complete (though it unfortunately doesn’t create some kind of internal contradiction): there is no point to creating falsifiable theories unless we can prove something false, but then it is inconsistent to say that science never proves anything if we’ve accepted logic into science (if logic and rationality, as you say, permeates it) since science can prove all sorts of things (false).
That the Sun doesn’t revolve around the Earth is no less of an empirical proposition than that the Earth revolves around the Sun, though I am somehow supposed to expect that one can be proven and the other not? Of course not. Then what is the purpose of falsifiable theories? They afford a test. But what is a “test” that has no conclusion? I mean, we haven’t proved anything!
You choose to qualify it with: “To be more precise, it is about approaching proof, but for practical purposes it is considered proof”. Why you choose this phrasing escapes me. What are “practical purposes” if not the domain of science? And here: “*For science proof is an acceptable range of uncertainty. *” And how do we determine that? [shakes head] I think the notion is fundamentally flawed, or totally mystical. I see no middle ground here.
Either science proves things or it does not. If it does, it has its own conception of proof that is not a mathematical one (though, for me, this statement still doesn’t apply, I think we can say something is just as certain as mathematical propositions in science, but that’s me). If it doesn’t, then we will sit here arguing until it does (damn it! :D).