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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
No, there aren't. All theories are tentative and open to falsification.
The roundness of the Earth is an observation, not a theory.
You would be wrong. Those who claim to have absolute proof are usually the ones farthest from it.
You do realize that you can see fossils, right?
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Problems tend to arise when people think they are certain. When you protect beliefs from being challenged you have beliefs not worth having.
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You can make hypotheses of what you should and shouldn't see if an object is millions of years old, and then test those objects to see if they do or do not have those characteristics. For example, if a zircon is millions of years old then it should contain specific ratios of Uranium and Lead. If it doesn't have any Lead then it isn't millions of years old. If it does, then assuming the laws of physics haven't change drastically, that zircon is millions of years old.
Why? When zircons form they exclude Lead and include Uranium. This is due to simple laws of chemistry where one has the right charge to fit into the cyrstal matrix and the other doesn't. We can do those experiments in the present day and show that zircons exclude Lead when they form. Since Uranium decays into Lead we know that the Lead got there because of the decay of Uranium. We can also measure how fast Uranium decays.
In order for the test not to be valid you have the change all the laws of physics.
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essentialsaltes
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That is not proof... that is just circular reasoning.
No, it isn't. It is a robust and specific result based on known science.
A circular argument assumes the answer. Radiometric dates do not assume the answer -- they measure it according to known rates of radiometric decay.
One may argue (and creationists do) about the method, but one thing the method is not, is circular.
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You'll need to define the term "supernatural". Science invokes all sorts of "hypothetical" entities, everything from string theory, to gravitons, to exotic matter theories. Thus far not a shred of scientific evidence actually supports these constructs, and string theory for instance doesn't even make any "testable" predictions. How do you falsify something like that?
IMO the term "supernatural" can be used interchangeably with the term 'hypothetical' in the field of physics.
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"◦Ask a Question
◦Do Background Research
◦Construct a Hypothesis
◦Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
◦Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
◦Communicate Your Results
"
Steps of the Scientific Method
That is step 3 of the scientific method. Are you really complaining that scientists are using the scientific method?
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In terms of the supernatural/hypothetical entities of "science", the problem always seems to be step 5, when the experiment doesn't jive with the expectations. Negative results are typically ignored, and the claim becomes a supernatural/hypothetical entity of the gaps claim.
BBC News - Popular physics theory running out of hiding places
LUX dark-matter search comes up empty - physicsworld.com
Electron Appears Spherical, Squashing Hopes for New Physics Theories: Scientific American
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jayem
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M-theory and those others are theoretical extensions of exisiting physical concepts. Even if they're not testable, they can be stated mathematically. But more importantly, these models still attempt to describe the natural world. There's no claim of anything that exists outside of, or beyond nature. Religion claims the existence of entities that are not a part of nature, yet have the power to affect the natural world, and even suspend the laws of nature. That's what I mean by supernaturalism. And any such claims are not scientific.
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Strathos
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Say you have an hourglass. You turn it upside down, and see that it takes exactly 1 hour for the sand to flow from the top to the bottom.
Then you find an identical hourglass, which is in the process of flowing. You didn't see it start flowing, so you didn't observe how long ago it started. But you can see that the sand is about halfway through. Therefore you can determine with reasonable accuracy that it started flowing around half an hour ago.
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You mean *besides* all those extra hypothetical spacetime dimensions? What exactly do you mean by the term "natural"? Does "natural" necessary mean "without God", but anything else goes?
Pantheism and Panetheism see God *as* nature, so "religion" isn't limited to "supernatural" definitions of God.
Well, M-theory (how can it even be called a "theory" by the way?) certainly suggests that "causes" exist outside of our 4 spacetime dimensions, which somehow have some effect on our concept of spacetime (GR).
It seems to me you're building artificial boundaries between the term "supernatural religious" claims and "supernatural pseudo-scientific" claims. Why? It's not like anything in particular could or would outright falsify M-theory, so how is it not an "act of faith" on the part of the believer that defies scientific falsification (AKA a religion)?
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About the only thing in science that is directly observable, are the data we collect when we do experiments.
Thus we don't directly observe the center of the earth to see if it has a semi molten core. Rather we collect data to test the idea that it's core is semi molten.
We don't directly observe atoms. Rather we collect data with which we test the idea that matter is made of atoms.
We don't directly observe one kind of dog giving rise to another kind of dog, say a wolf giving rise to a domestic dog. Rather, we collect data to test the idea that domestic dogs came from wolves.
We don't directly observe Pluto orbiting the sun. No one lives that long. Rather we collect data which shows us that Pluto almost certainly orbits the sun.
Science is about ideas, and setting up experiments to collect data by which we test those ideas. The data are what we directly observe, not the ideas.
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SuperChristian25
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That's because you could directly observe it, which only takes place here and now. That is science.
No.
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That's because you could directly observe it, which only takes place here and now. That is science.
No.
Yes.
You don't have to directly observe something to figure out what happened. In fact, relying solely on visual observation is quite unscientific.
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SuperChristian25
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Well that does actually make sense after re-thinking about it. It is through the process of falsification that we can come to know the truth. Otherwise people would still believe in flat earth etc.
I said the earth being flat was a theory at one time, and now the telescope of NASA tells a different story. So then, a theory could become fact.
So the roundness of the earth is wrong? The roundness of the earth is a fact.
Yes. That's a fact.
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SuperChristian25
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Read it again. You don't know how long ago the hourglass started flowing down. But you could see it's already half way. Which method and how do you determine it started an hour ago? You wasn't there.
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'Weren't'. Not 'wasn't'. And it doesn't matter.
I already observed that an hourglass with the same amount of sand took an hour to empty. Therefore, if I see an hourglass with the same amount of sand, that's half on both sides, it's reasonable to assume it's been emptying for half an hour, because it's been empty at the same rate the other hourglass has. The only reason this wouldn't be true is if some outside for affected the way the sand was falling, or if gravity or something is working differently in this particular spot - but until there's a reason to take such factors into account, I have no cause to assume the rate at which the hourglass is draining has been affected.
Let's say we have a crime where a witness sees the defendant enter into victim's house with a knife. We know the defendant and the victim were having arguments and even made a few threats. After the defendant enters the house, we hear a scream, and the defendant is seen leaving with a bloody knife. The witness goes to check on the victim, and sure enough, he's been stabbed to death.
But the witness never saw the actual crime. All she can provide is circumstantial evidence surrounding it. Should her testimony be dismissed simply because she didn't see it happening with her own two eyes? Are the circumstances surrounding the incident not enough to draw a conclusion?
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