And i am not falling into an error. i said, "experimental results that cannot be duplicated are of no value in science; one of the reasons we reject claims of the miraculous. Such claims can never be repeated under controlled conditions, nor shown to ever have happened" and that is quite true. Science does reject claims of the miraculous, or anything else that is against all known science and has no evidence to indicate it happened.
On some miracles, science does
not reject them. For instance, science does not reject the miracle of the loaves and fishes. It can't. That miracle
may have happened. Same with the Resurrection. Neither left evidence that would have lasted until today.
If you say "against all known science", then you are using theory to reject data. You can never do that. You see, the miracles are "data"; observations.
In science, "rejected" is the same as saying "refuted" or "false". And that isn't what science does. Science treats the miracles as an anomaly. Science is much more neutral than "rejected".
Let me go into more detail about how miracles are "data".
We'll start with the resurrection. Scientifically, what you have with the dead bodies is a THEORY, based upon the individual data points of dead bodies we have observed. The *theory* states that a person dead will not come back to life. However, you can never prove a theory, you can only test it. So far, all the data supports that theory. BUT, Yeshu's possible resurrection is DATA. That is the point you keep missing. Data can always overthrow theory. But you cannot use theory reject data. You cannot generalize from what you have observed to reject the next observation.
Now, Yeshu's supposed resurrection is not solid data. It happened a long time ago and it left no physical consequences around that we can objectively, intersubjectively study today. So, we are allowed to view the event as an anomaly and do not have to revise the theory. But we simply
cannot use the theory to say the data (the resurrection) never happened.
Let me give you another example of theory and data. We have released several rocks and seen them fall. So we devise a theory of gravity that says that ALL unsupported objects will fall. This works well as we drop bricks, limbs, seashells, leaves, etc. But then we try a helium balloon. It goes up. Do we deny that it goes up? NO. Instead, we revise the theory to: all objects that mass more than the air they displace will fall when unsupported. The THEORY gets changed. In the case of Yeshu, IF we could find objecitve data to confirm the event happened, then our theory would be: all humans who die remain dead except when deity interferes and reverses the process.
"Some "miraculous" events would leave evidence that would persist to today. Miraculous creation of species in their present form, for instance.
True, if it had happened.
But that is no different from any other claim of an action in the past, including the non-miraculous. Currently there is a theory about a meteor impact at the end of the Cretaceous and a theory about a meteor impact at the end of the Lesser Dryas.
IF it had happened, there would be a crator. Contrary data allows us to falsify the theory. True statements cannot have false consequences. When we find false consequences, the statement cannot be true. In the case of the theory about the meteor impact at the end of the Cretaceous, a crator was discovered at Chixulub Mexico. No crator has been discovered at the end of the Lesser Dryas.
I guess I could decide you dont know what you are talking about and are distorting science, with this statement...."accepted scientific theory until 1800-1831. It has been shown to be wrong. So we can't teach it as true"
Where i come from we dont teach any theory as being 'true".
Really? They don't teach cell theory as true? They don't teach round earth as true? How about the theory that DNA is in a double helix? What do you teach them as?
Stephen J Gould put it this way: "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withold provisional assent."
But i will take it as a misstatement on your part, much as you could take it that when i said science is based on observation and experiment, i didnt mean that was the entire thing.
I will admit to being just a grad student and you have more experience in science than I do.
And how much philosophy of science have you had as a grad student?
There is no difficulty unless one is stuck on thinking that there is only one creation story. The critical analysis yields a simple result: there are 2 creation stories from 2 different traditions within ancient Israel. Read literally, they both contradict. Read for their theological messages, they present 2 different but non-contradictory sets of theological messages.
