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To: stands2reason
Don't be dim, and reconsider the question.

Don't be a moron, and realize there are a thousand gods. There are also demigods, demons, fairies, pixies, djinns, ghosts, poltergeists, familiar spirits, banshees, and a zillion other fanciful creatures. How many of those do you want to include in your statement, and why should you include some and not others?

I have an idea. Why we don't say that science doesn't consider the supernatural, and leave it at that?

363 posted on 05/03/2006 7:42:58 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor
Why we don't say that science doesn't consider the supernatural, and leave it at that?

Well, if you want to be a purist about it, fine with me.

368 posted on 05/03/2006 7:46:24 PM PDT by stands2reason ("Patriotism is the highest form of dissent." - Mark Steyn)
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To: Right Wing Professor
I have an idea. Why we don't say that science doesn't consider the supernatural, and leave it at that?

Good, then we can tell some scientists that they can stop telling everybody that God used evolution to create mankind.

378 posted on 05/03/2006 7:55:36 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: Right Wing Professor; stands2reason
Why we don't say that science doesn't consider the supernatural, and leave it at that?

I agree that it is, and essentially always has been to date, a factually accurate statement to say that no (successful) scientific theory or principle has included the supernatural as a mechanism, or in any substantive way "considered" the supernatural.

However, as a philosophical fine point, I wouldn't necessarily "leave it at that". I might, and in fact would, recommend leaving it at that. But if somebody wants to try constructing some kind of scientific theory or principle that includes the supernatural, I'd say they're welcome to make the attempt.

I can't imagine how this project would possibly succeed. It would certainly seem that any theory with a supernatural mechanism must be invincibly ad hoc, unless you simply assert that the supernatural mechanism will behave according to set rules, which then would make it indistinguishable from a natural force or principle.

Nevertheless I hold that the "nature of science" always has been and always will be determined by the content of science, in that if a successful and genuinely useful scientific theory emerges which somehow violates our current understanding of the nature of science, it will always be incorporated into science and thus change our understanding of what constitutes the nature of science.

The flip side of this concession is that it is useless for antievolutionists to whine about science excluding the supernatural. All they have to do is create a genuinely useful scientific theory that includes the supernatural, and they can change this.

385 posted on 05/03/2006 8:01:19 PM PDT by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
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