seems a lot of folks are determined to misunderstand what I stated.
I will state it again:
whenever theories go beyond what is testable, there is no difference between such theories and supernatural explanations.
additionally:
Everything which is testable has always been testable and will always be testable (provided no change in basic conditions, of course) irrespective of the level of technology in man's arsenal.
This has -or so it would seem- led some folks to make some rather snarky assumptions and cast some rather stupid aspersions ("masters of the universe" et alia).
TRY TO READ WHAT IS STATED.
I'll help, with an illustration:
On an airstrip sit two objects.
One is a fuelled and fully functional top-of-the-line single-seat fighter aircraft.
The second is cube of an equivalent mass of basalt.
The aircraft is capable of being flown, irrespective of whether or not there is anyone on Earth capable of flying it. It is and shall remain flyable, independent of human know-how.
The basalt cube is not capable of being flown, ever, period, paragraph, full stop. It is and shall remain un-flyable, independent of human know-how.
That a thing is flyable in no way implies that humans will ever develop the capability to fly it. Humans fail all the time - no reason at all to assume they will succeed in doing a thing simply because it is doable.
Place the airfield as described above in pre-colonial New Guinea, and posit no foreign interference:
Odds are against any of the natives recognizing the plane as a vehicle, let alone that it can be flown, let alone figuring out how to fly it.
Indeed, as modern fighter aircraft more closely resemble sharks than birds, they could be more likely to think it a watercraft than an aircraft, if they see it as a craft at all.
BUT THE SAVAGES' LACK OF KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT DETERMINE WHICH OBJECT IS FLYABLE AND WHICH IS NOT.
Similarly with testability.
The technological achievement of science does not determine what is testable; it determines what tests we are cabable of making.
And just as familiarity with the principles of flight does allow a pilot to know an aircraft from an unflyable cube of basalt, so too does empirical science enable the scientist to tell a testable hypothesis from one which cannot be tested, ever.
In both cases, for pilot and scientist, there are gray areas - cases in which the thing under consideration *might* be flyable, in which an hypothesis *might* be testable. These things should neither be accepted nor rejected out of hand. They are interesting, potentially useful, potentially rubbish, but not immediately identifiably so.
The trick is to separate truly gray hypotheses from ones which, frankly, are cases in which people have, piecemeal and ad-hoc, built a plane around a cube of basalt.
ALL RIGHT KING.. lay off the dumberol that stuff'll make you ignert..
I'm not sure your analogy is sufficiently direct in this instance, King Prout. For one thing, the fact that some human beings in New Guinea would fail to recognize that the object that sits on their tarmac is a fighter jet does not mitigate at all against the truth that the jet was expressly, knowledgeably built for flight, and beyond that for military missions. In other words, to use the language of Aristotelian causation, the formal cause of the jet seeks fulfillment in a final cause (i.e., flight, military missions); and material and efficient causes were applied so as to achieve the aimed-for goal.
Any "gray area" involves the state of our knowledge regarding the object, not the object itself. The guy (team) who built the jet has no "gray area" respecting that particular jet. Does this make any sense at all?
Thanks so much for writing, KP!
My grey hypothesis is this:
You hit the nail on the head earlier with your description of the possible way out of the conudrum, by the analogy to the past lives of characters in a novel.
Which leads to this post, there is no way to test the hypothesis.
Full Disclosure: Incidentally, it is the inability of "the scientific method" to differentiate between the untestable which gives the Flying Spaghetti Monster its ZING!
Cheers!
This sounds like it was inspired by Feynman's "cargo cult science" which he used to describe psychology, but which I think has applicability to ID...
Cheers!
"whenever theories go beyond what is testable, there is no difference between such theories and supernatural explanations."
Allow me to look at this statement a minute.
What if that statement is true?
To determine the origin of the earth is not testable.
Therefore, any theories concerning the Origin of the Earth have equal standing as any supernatural explanation.
If this is true, then Theories of the Origin of the Earth and Intelligent Creationism should be taught side by side.
Are you really sure this is the outcome you want?
If you analyze the situation you are now in then you must come to the conclusion that BEING ABLE TO TEST SOMETHING IS NOT A GOOD FOUNDATION ON WHICH TO ACCOUNT FOR ALL THE MANY MYSTERIES OF LIFE ON EARTH.
The mere act of TESTING is actually a comparison of one thing to another. There is no way for a human to KNOW the entirety of anything by measuring or testing.
Them's my sentiments.
Perhaps this post is a little more testing than you want.
Could that mean you are supernatual?
This is all in fun. No offense intended.
What is your Theory of Love? Is it possible to test Love and yet it remains and you must go beyond testing and then again we come head on into the Supernatural.
Funny, We think the Supernatural is not testable.
Can you tell me the intrinsic and full value of a one dollar bill? You will not come to a conclusion using testing. Is the dollar Supernatural?
These are not frivoulous questions. They are unusual admittedly.