Science is limited

[livingwordlabels]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.
I'm not saying this limitation undermines science as a valid and extremely useful source of knowledge. However, what does undermine its reliability is when people use it to make assumptions and conclusions without acknowledging this limitation.

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether God exists or not. God is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science.

Also when people use only what they can observe to explain how mankind was created. This inevitably fails, as they have to limit life to something physical and we get the absurd idea of life evolving out of matter. The Bible offers us a more plausible explanation - that God created man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. If we believe the Bible, we can see that humans are spiritual as well as physical.

My conclusion? If you want to understand God, how we were made, our purpose for living, our relationship with God and even our future, then you need something more than science.

[instantc]

I'll put it another way. What I mean is that if entity A has existed for a finite amount of time, and prior to entity A there was literally nothing

Still gibberish. You're talking about a point in time in which time does not exist.

It's not gibberish, it's a logical necessity. If there is no 'prior to the universe', then 'prior to the universe' is an empty set of properties and the proposition 'prior to the universe there was nothing' is true. More importantly, if anything didn't cause the universe to exist, then an empty set of properties turned into a non-empty set. Therefore the only intelligible conclusion seems to me to be that the universe has always existed in one form or the other.

[10CC]

I'll put it another way. What I mean is that if entity A has existed for a finite amount of time, and prior to entity A there was literally nothing

Still gibberish. You're talking about a point in time in which time does not exist.

It's not gibberish, it's a logical necessity. If there is no 'prior to the universe', then the proposition 'prior to the universe there was nothing' is true. More importantly, if anything didn't cause the universe to exist, then an empty set of properties turned into a non-empty set. Therefore the only intelligible conclusion seems to me to be that the universe has always existed in one form or the other.

I'm not sure that you notice this but all of our arguments concerning "Life the universe and everything" is based solely on US. We observe what we can of the universe, life and everything and WE try to understand it.

The question that perhaps we should ponder is:

"Without US what would be the answer to the question of life the universe and everything?"

Just a thought.

And who or what could or would ask it?

[Baz]

[Replying to 10CC]

"

Without US what would be the answer to the question of life the universe and everything?"

Or possibly without US what is god? On the other foot, without god what are we?
One answer to both could be; Still there but different.




.

[Clownboat]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.
I'm not saying this limitation undermines science as a valid and extremely useful source of knowledge. However, what does undermine its reliability is when people use it to make assumptions and conclusions without acknowledging this limitation.

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether God exists or not. God is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science.

Also when people use only what they can observe to explain how mankind was created. This inevitably fails, as they have to limit life to something physical and we get the absurd idea of life evolving out of matter. The Bible offers us a more plausible explanation - that God created man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. If we believe the Bible, we can see that humans are spiritual as well as physical.

My conclusion? If you want to understand God, how we were made, our purpose for living, our relationship with God and even our future, then you need something more than science.

I feel you are mistaken about science. It does not only deal in the physical.

You see, if there was a god out there that wasn't detectable, but was claimed to answer prayers, we could detect the effect that this undetectable god has on answering prayer.

This has been done, and has shown that there does not seem to be a god out there that answers prayers. This was only done in relation to the Christian god that I am aware of. So perhaps Allah, or one of the other thousands of god concepts out there are true. I sure have not seen any evidence of this though.

Do you have any evidence, or is "breathing into dust" really all you need to consider?

[Star]

Science has made great advancements in cosmology, and no doubt it will keep developing, but there are good reasons to believe that the picture will never be 'complete' as you say. In principle, science can only explain how things work, but it has nothing to say about how the said things came to be in the first place. It seems to me that the only logical answer science can provide is that the universe has always existed in one form or the other. Science hasn't explained how something can come from nothing. I submit that as long as we are talking about nothing in the very literal sense, it is logically impossible for nothing to turn into something.

We don't know if science's understanding will ever be complete, or not. Information doesn't propagate faster than the speed of light, and if that's really a law that can't be broken, it will be impossible for us to observe what happens beyond the visible universe. The most distant galaxies are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. We can only see a snapshot of them billions of years back in time. What's happening with them now, we'll probably never know.

Science actually does attempt to explain how things came to be. I'm not sure where you heard that. The "how" is squarely within the domain of scientific theory. We "came to be" primarily by natural selection. That is how.

The Big Bang explains how the universe was created. The cause of the Big Bang is an active area of study. So is a/biogenesis and chemical evolution.

Look up A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. He theorizes that universes are the products of quantum fluctuations, and he has some interesting evidence to back it up.

[Star]

Scientists and philosophers alike agree that the natural sciences are based upon faith based assumptions. So it's laughable to see atheists criticizing the concept of faith when the very own scientific enterprise that they claim to love and cherish is also based on faith.

To have faith means believing in something without evidence. What self-respecting scientist agrees that the natural sciences (astronomy, biology, chemistry, Earth sciences, and physics) are based on faith?

Name them.

[Star]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.

No, science doesn't really attempt to prove, at least not formally.

It's true that usually (although not always) science must be testable and falsifiable. In other words, science typically disproves, it doesn't prove. Our understanding is improved when theory is confirmed by testing and withstands scrutiny.

Proof is usually reserved for math and logic (and liquor).

I will agree with you on one thing... science is definitely LIMITED... to that which actually exists lol.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html

[Goose]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.

No, science doesn't really attempt to prove, at least not formally.

It's true that usually (although not always) science must be testable and falsifiable. In other words, science typically disproves, it doesn't prove. Our understanding is improved when theory is confirmed by testing and withstands scrutiny.

Proof is usually reserved for math and logic (and liquor).

I will agree with you on one thing... science is definitely LIMITED... to that which actually exists lol.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html

Science is limited to more than that which exists. It's limited, as you've stated, because it formally can't prove anything. But do you know why the scientific method cannot prove anything?

It can’t prove anything because it fundamentally relies upon the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent

If A, then B
B
Therefore A.

If Bill Gates owns Fort Know, then Bill Gates is rich
Bill Gates is Rich
Therefore Bill Gates Owns Fort Knox

Invalid logic.

�It’s an obvious logical fallacy because there might be many reasons for Q. And yet, all science rests on doing just that.’
http://evolvingthoughts.net/2012/01/aff ... d-history/

�The reason nothing can be proven is very simple—all scientific conclusions rely upon the fallacy of affirming the consequent, and in doing so they rely upon inductive extrapolation.�
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/camp.html

This is why, logically speaking, the scientific method is only useful for disproving a hypothesis via Modus Tollens

If A, then B
Not B
Therefore not A

If I am standing under a waterfall, then I am wet
I am not wet
Therefore I am not standing under a waterfall

Valid logic.

Just another reason why science is limited.

[10CC]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.

No, science doesn't really attempt to prove, at least not formally.

It's true that usually (although not always) science must be testable and falsifiable. In other words, science typically disproves, it doesn't prove. Our understanding is improved when theory is confirmed by testing and withstands scrutiny.

Proof is usually reserved for math and logic (and liquor).

I will agree with you on one thing... science is definitely LIMITED... to that which actually exists lol.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html

Science is limited to more than that which exists. It's limited, as you've stated, because it formally can't prove anything. But do you know why the scientific method cannot prove anything?

It can’t prove anything because it fundamentally relies upon the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent

If A, then B
B
Therefore A.

If Bill Gates owns Fort Know, then Bill Gates is rich
Bill Gates is Rich
Therefore Bill Gates Owns Fort Knox

Invalid logic.

�It’s an obvious logical fallacy because there might be many reasons for Q. And yet, all science rests on doing just that.’
http://evolvingthoughts.net/2012/01/aff ... d-history/

�The reason nothing can be proven is very simple—all scientific conclusions rely upon the fallacy of affirming the consequent, and in doing so they rely upon inductive extrapolation.�
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/camp.html

This is why, logically speaking, the scientific method is only useful for disproving a hypothesis via Modus Tollens

If A, then B
Not B
Therefore not A

If I am standing under a waterfall, then I am wet
I am not wet
Therefore I am not standing under a waterfall

Valid logic.

Just another reason why science is limited.

God exists because I am afraid of dying.
I'm afraid of dying
Therefore god exists.
EDIT. Disclaimer: I'm not actually afraid of dying.

[keithprosser3]

If Bill Gates owns Fort Know, then Bill Gates is rich
Bill Gates is Rich
Therefore Bill Gates Owns Fort Knox

Invalid logic.

Invalid logic indeed. A fact every half-trained scientist has built into his world-view. Science also includes the idea that can be paraphrased along the lines of, so if BG owns Fort Knox, we should be able to find his title deeds, and BG should have privileged access to the contents of Fort Knox and so on.

So science goes away and checks not just one consequence of BG owning Fort Knox - that it would make BG rich which checks out - but all the other consequences of BG owning Fort Knox, which don't check out. It wouldn't take long to realise that the explanation for BGs wealth was not that he owned Fort Knox.

In fact it is very difficult to come up with a theory of Bill Gates' wealth that fits with all the available facts, except for the true one - he owns Microsoft. Affirming the consequent - a single consequent - is a fallacy, but if your theory affirms 10 or a 100 or a 1000 consequents chances are you are probably on to something.

Science is now so full of interconnections and dependencies that any theory will have lots and lots of testable consequences. The hard part these days is to come up with a theory that doesn't come up against some problem straight away. Our knowledge is not perfect, but it is like a jigsaw 3/4 done. The odd piece might be out of position, but if a jigsaw looks like the Mona Lisa when 3/4 done it almost certainly is the Mona Lisa and not a view of the Washington Monument.

I don't worry that science is completely off track - it is too well interlocked for that to be the case.

Probably.

If science is limited, it may be because we are not clever enough to imagine new and better theories. What was before the Big Bang? Who knows? Human imaginations didn't evolve to picture infinitely dense microscopic balls of plasma where time itself may or may not exist. It's easy to come up with theories that clearly don't work and it seems to be getting harder to think up ones that do.

And there is the problem of mental phenomena - consciousness, free-will, qualia etc - to worry about. There is no reason for scientists to be complacent, but they have no reason to despair either.