Wide enough to include fantasies, superstition, and unsupported desires mistaken for belief, among other things...
Call that kind of mish-mash what you will, but do not insult our intelligence -- or your own -- by calling it "science". It isn't.
Science is, quite simply, *the* most incredibly effective and productive method ever found for separating sense from nonsense, truth from falsehood, knowledge from speculation. It is the most powerful means in all of human history for extracting reliable knowledge from the Universe. It has done more to make fundamental discoveries, enhance living standards, produce workable results, etc., than *any* other method of searching for knowledge. Indeed, it has done so vastly better and produce vastly more real results than *ALL* other methods combined, including philosophy, religion, intuition, or anything else you care to list. And it has done so by a careful refinement and accumulation of methods which are demonstrably reliable and effective.
You can not arbitrarily "include" methods known to be shaky and unreliable and still have it be *science*, although I know that this is a popular attempt by those (including the IDers and other mystics) who wish to dishonestly stretch "science" to include their own pet superstitions by "expanding" the definition of science. The deep and fundamental dishonesty of this is that they're trying to wrap their untested (and often *untestable*) beliefs in the authority of science -- but they do so by *undermining* the very essence of science (it's methodical reliability) in an attempt to falsely give their claims an air of scientific validation THAT THEIR CLAIMS HAVE NOT ACTUALLY EARNED.
And let's revisit that "testability" requirement for a moment, since it bears on something that the critics of science seldom seem to properly grasp (and instead just ludicrously ridicule it without understanding with childishly inappropriate analogies like "tunnelvisioned bloodhounds", as if scientific inquiry isn't the vastly wide-ranging activity that it actually is).
Some think that the "requirements of science" are some sort of "club" that erects artificial restrictions to keep out the "unwanted" viewpoints. But that's not the case.
Instead, the scientific method has been developed over the centuries to incorporate reliable methods of acquiring valid knowledge, and avoid unreliable methods.
And the reason that "testable" and "falsifiable" are such large parts of that method is because they get to the core essense of telling sense from nonsense. Or even more to the point, useful knowledge from useless notions.
And that's the crux of the issue. If an idea isn't "scientifically testable", it's because it has *no* real-world consequences. It doesn't affect reality, or if it does, it does so in no predictable or useful ways. It is, in every sense of the word, a useless idea. An idea which has no practical value, which makes no difference, which produces no results. In short, it's an idea that doesn't make any difference whether it's true or not.
Useful ideas *are* testable. Useless ones are not.
Science deals with useful ideas. Useless ones are outside of its scope. For some reason, this seems to bug the hell out of some people, so they feel they have to denigrate science, or smugly declare that there are "larger truths" or "other methods" of determining truth (despite the notably poor performance of those other methods over the past several thousand years), in order to cling to the hope that their preferred philosophies might "really" be true in some "higher" sense, despite the fact that they can't be found useful (and therefore testable) in any *real* sense in this *real* world.
If that's your goal, just be honest enough to come out and say so, but don't try to denigrate science for failing to find any support for your view, or try to dishonestly "stretch" science (to the point where it loses its reliability) in a cheap attempt to *pretend* that your views have been given a scientific seal of approval. You can't have it both ways.
Now would be a good time to remind everyone that all the "intelligent design" people here were merely "creationists" a mere 3 or so years ago.
It would be fun to really comb the FR archives to pull up some of the creationist dribble from the very same people here who twaddle on about the "Designer" as if they've come to some sort of epiphany.
BS is BS no matter what you call it.
Great post.
The presence of organized matter that behaves according to predicatable laws is indeed scientifically testable. It is the stuff of science. To infer from the presence of the same that intelligent design is involved with its presence is no less reasonable than assuming some other agent, which agent (or agents) on the part of evos seems a shade scrappy. Intelligent design is a theory that well explains the whole of the universe, not to mention the practice of science itself.
I hope you're saving that post so it can be trotted out again. It's probably needed in every thread.
The sounds of rational thought.
Thank you.