Darwin's Conservatives: The Misguided Quest

Discovery Institute Press/Amazon.com ^ | 11/8/06 | John G. West

[js1138]

You claim that scientific knowledge is constantly changing, yet you imply that such knowledge is an accurate account of reality, and use it as a premise to contradict religion.

These are not contradictory. Scientific knowledge changes in the direction of becoming more precise.

Of course if one's knowledge of science comes from newspapers and Hollywood, the "facts" of science get oversimplified.

The best example of how facts remain facts while changing lies in the history of our understanding of the solar system. When it was first suggested that planets orbited the sun, orbits were conceived of as circular. It took hundreds of years to achieve a high degree of precision in our understanding of gravity, and we're not finished yet.

Yet the original "fact" remains: the earth moves.

[csense]

Scientific knowledge changes in the direction of becoming more precise.

You have no way of knowing that. All you can really say is that a theory is false if it yields false consequences. But you can not say that any given theory is true if it has not been falsified. Remember that in logic, a false premise can yield true consequences, and since a true premise can only yield true consequences, you would have to know all possible consequences to ascertain it's truth, and since you seem to agree that scientific knowledge is always in motion, such a thing is virtually impossible.

The principle of contradiction allows us to determine what isn't true...but as of yet, there is no method that allows us to know what is.

[js1138]

The principle of contradiction allows us to determine what isn't true...but as of yet, there is no method that allows us to know what is.

Science deals in reliability, not TRVTH. I was simply citing an example of how science brings knowledge into sharper focus over time.

[csense]

Science deals in reliability, not TRVTH

And yet you injected yourself in a conversation specifically about scientific truth. Jeez louise, and I could have been playing my Lowden.....

[Oztrich Boy]

You claim that scientific knowledge is constantly changing, yet you imply that such knowledge is an accurate account of reality, and use it as a premise to contradict religion.

Science provides a close approzimation to reality - gets closer all the time.

[js1138]

I don't know about reality, but science gets mor precise and reliable as it moves on. It doesn't have to contradict religion unless religion insists on making silly statements, such as the sun revolves around the earth, or the earth is 6000 years old.