Posted on 01/28/2005 4:28:41 PM PST by metacognative
OK.
These kind of arguments are equally bad for science and theology.
What argument? The argument that life has only been observed to come from other life is not an argument, it's a fact.
We just went in a circle somehow.
How is primary data obtained by performing an experiment in the lab, or observing the moons of jupiter through a telescope knowledge based on the eyewitness testimony of others?
What was the origin of antibiotic study? Bacteria. Without bacteria there would be no study of antibiotics.
"NOTE: This is a 'truth of science' debate. Leave God out of it, and keep minds open!"
LOL!
God is the author of ALL the laws of science.
It's impossible to leave Him out of it.
LOL!
Can you trust your own eyes ? If you observe something once, can you be sure it happened ? You are at the mercy of your own senses, which are no different than the senses of other witnesses.
Maybe I misunderstood your original comment. But I am refering to the argument that "we do not fully understand how the first living cell arose, therefore it must have been from a supernatural source". This is lazy, unproductive science, and potentially very damaging for theology if your stake you faith to this claim. The Catholic Church was forced to eat a whole lot of crow by grounding itself to the Pteolmaic system.
Witnesses are the worst and least reliable form of evidence. It is true that we accept witnesses for the simple reason that we can't see everything for ourselves.
There is a difference, however, between accepting a third-hand account of an event that can never be repeated, and accepting accounts of observations that can be redone. From a purely philosophical perspective there may be little difference, but from a practical perspective, repeated witness is more trusted.
Now I think you have moved into Nihilism, which I cannot refute on logical grounds.
Yet are you sure you want to go there? I mean what made you think you could trust that your computer would magically light up when you hit the "on" button?
Also do you go for regular medical checkups? If so why?
The difference is the number of witnesses. Hebrews required at least 3 eyewitnesses before accepting testimony in court. Science also requires multiple witnesses. Just as science requires multiple eyewitnesses, so does the bible.
We can argue whether 3 is enough and we can argue the quality of the testimony, but both religion and science are based on witnesses. We just have different thresholds as to what we require as sufficient witness. Its a matter of degree.
If I am wrong, you can surely provide an example of knowledge that is not based on witnesses.
If I am not allowed to exist, then how can I know anything?
How are you not allowed to exist. Are there witnesses that attest to your existance ?
How could I know? I can't trust anything my senses tell me.
Satan might be fooling me that I am on the internet talking with you while my wife is reading a book on the couch.
There is no real knowledge, from eyewitness or otherwise.
A generalization. Yes, studies and most people's own personal experience will vouch that much that is claimed to have been witnessed doesn't fit the facts as otherwise more fidelically recorded. Say a tape recording of a town supervisor's meeting. Yet the tape recording will miss cues and other strong information transfers without discernable sonic signature.
In one way what you say speaks to the ease at which people can delude or be deluded -- and so give a unreliable account.
Why do you believe your own senses? Because from habit and experience you have found them trustworthy. So we are talking trustworthy witness, revelatory, trained or strongly correlated by other evidences.
A primary postulate: you accept that you exist. That you think, that you are sane, that your senses and experiences are faithful. "I think therefore I am." -- a tautology, there's no therefore needed. Existance is NOT a theory for proof. "I am." -- shorter and simpler. More accurate.
At some point, you accept the evidence that your senses bring to your brain. If you do reject it, others may believe you exist based on their own senses or the senses of others.
Satan might be fooling me that I am on the internet talking with you while my wife is reading a book on the couch.
Entirely possible. That is why we obtain confirmation from others.
There is no real knowledge, from eyewitness or otherwise.
Truth exists whether we believe or have knowledge of it.
No, it is neither the number of witnesses nor their quality.
If someone pulls alongside me at a traffic light and says one of my tires is almost flat, I'm inclined to believe him. If 20 people say they were abducted by aliend, I'm inclined to be skeptical. It's not the quality of the testimony, but the reasonableness of it.
There's a story about meteorites and someone declaring that he would rather believe a Harvard professor is a liar than believe rocks fall out of the sky. I happen to think that is a reasonable point of view, in the absense of a theory of where the rocks came from.
Science does not simply believe testimony. It requires mutiple, independent lines of evidence when confronted by implausible phenomena. For this reason, no one takes reports of UFOs and psychic phenomenta seriously. There are lots of witnesses, many of them apparently sane, but no line of evidence that is independent of witnesses.
You can't argue this from logic. It's a matter of judgement. There is no proof that one line of evidence is true and another false.
At what point? Please explain.
Can't even say that. "There is thought" might be even more accurate.
The PostModernDeconstructionist version of Creationism is running this week.
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