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To: Wonder Warthog
It's all about being "hard-facts based" and useful in making predictions about or explaining previously not-understood facts of science or nature.

What are "hard facts", if not truth? Your answer to the first part of my post implies that science is but a subset of the search for truth; that science is concerned with those things which may be explained and predicted. Yet, here you change the definition of science as being that which is "hard facts" based. Again, you seem to define truth (hard facts) as only that which can be explained and/or reproduced.

By your definition, do there exist hard facts which can neither be explained nor reliably reproduced? ...or does inexplicability or irreproducibility negate the existence of hard fact?

167 posted on 09/15/2005 9:26:06 AM PDT by TChris ("The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail" - Goh Chok Tong)
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To: TChris
"Your answer to the first part of my post implies that science is but a subset of the search for truth; that science is concerned with those things which may be explained and predicted. Yet, here you change the definition of science as being that which is "hard facts" based. Again, you seem to define truth (hard facts) as only that which can be explained and/or reproduced."

No, I'm defining SCIENCE as "only that which can be explained or reproduced".

"By your definition, do there exist hard facts which can neither be explained nor reliably reproduced? ...or does inexplicability or irreproducibility negate the existence of hard fact?"

Yes, of course there do exist such hard facts--and finding the eplanations of those is what science is all about, so "no"--simply because something is currently "inexplicable or irreproducible" doesn't "negate the existence of hard fact", but that does mean that whatever that particular "hard fact" is, is not yet "science".

This is why I simply don't buy the idea of "irreducible complexity" as an argument for "intelligent design". Just because something APPEARS "irreducibly complex" by today's knowledge base doesn't mean that it "is" REALLY "irreducibly complex".

170 posted on 09/15/2005 9:49:24 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel)
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