[Lorianne]

For the second time, I did not say science cannot prove anything. I've said science can "prove" SOME things.

To use your example, you said DNA can prove whether or not someone was involved in a crime. That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Science cannot prove that. It can prove whether or not a person's DNA was found by human investigators, but it cannot prove that person was not there or not involved in a crime in some way. Blind faith in "science" can be detrimental to finding the whole truth, since science can only tell you what you were looking for. If you're searching for DNA from a particular individual and do not find it, all you know is that you have not found a particular thing at a particular place. There are still ways a person can be "involved" in a crime without leaving DNA clues. We can rule out SOME things, but not all things with science. Ergo, science can disprove, but not prove.

Science tells us only SOME things, typically things we were looking for to begin with, though sometimes we learn facts by happy coincidence. The more scientists delve into genetics, for example, the more they learn, the more they also learn that there are more realms within the field of genetics which we do not know, more puzzles to solve. And so it goes. Science doesn't end, it is never conclusive and whole in its "truth". Actually, our understanding of reality is never conclusive and whole. We can only deduce.

[Hank Kerchief]

For the second time, I did not say science cannot prove anything. I've said science can "prove" SOME things.

In post #91 you said: In fact, any scientist will tell you that "science" cannot prove, it can only disprove.

If I misunderstood this, I'm sorry, but it does seem to say science cannot prove anything, only "disprove" things. (Although, what the difference is seems entirely semantic to me. If science disproves the contention, "heavier than air flight is impossible," it must have proved it is possible.

To use your example, you said DNA can prove whether or not someone was involved in a crime. That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Science cannot prove that. It can prove whether or not a person's DNA was found by human investigators, but it cannot prove that person was not there or not involved in a crime in some way. Blind faith in "science" can be detrimental to finding the whole truth, since science can only tell you what you were looking for. If you're searching for DNA from a particular individual and do not find it, all you know is that you have not found a particular thing at a particular place. ...

If it is known there is only one perpetrator of a crime (rape, say) and the DNA of the evidential sperm does not match the DNA of the accused, it proves the accused was not the perpetrator. In this case, it could even prove the perpetrator was not there.

DNA evidence can be used to both prove and disprove, for example, paternity.

Science doesn't end, it is never conclusive and whole in its "truth"

I have the impression you are essentially making the argument that if you don't know everything, you don't know anything. Such truth as science establishes is true and true absolutely. But science is only one field of intellectual enquirey, as I said before. A much more important field is philosophy and in that field very little progress has been made until very recently, and that is only a beginning.

Nevertheless, the only means to knowing truth with which human beings have been endowed is reason, and whatever cannot be known by reason, cannot be known, and whatever is asserted to be knowledge that is not verifiable by reason is a lie.

Hank