How could you falsify macroevolution?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by GePap
A hose collar is very usefull, but if no one has a ahorse, it is irrelevant.

If I don't have a horse, then the horse collar isn't very useful either.

What I am asking is whether there is a point at which one can proclaim that through empirical methods we can attain a similar certainty to our collective knowledge that the folks who hold revealed truth have with theirs. Is there a point at which the scientific community would be willing to stand and proclaim "we KNOW", as opposed to "look how good our current model is, isn't it neato!"

There's a point where the scientific community can say "we believe that our current model is accurate enough for us to be able to put a man on the moon," and when the rocket blows up on the launch pad then the scientific community can say "we have reason to believe that it was probably the engineers and/or parts manufacturers who ****ed up." That's a helluva lot more significant than saying "look at our neato model!" but is still a step short of saying "we KNOW that our model is accurate" -- situations will still arise when, say, the bridge collapses and the design engineers say "wtf, we did everything by the book!" and the scientists who wrote the book will look embarassed and say "whoops, our bad." "the book" can never be held as holy writ, because it's not holy writ -- it's "just" a model that hasn't broken yet, and while we may have enough faith in the model to risk lives and capital on the model, we always need to be aware that it might not have been the engineers or manufacturers who ****ed up when things go wrong.

[The Mad Viking]

Originally posted by GePap


And would we have electronics today?

You guys seems stuck on the past. This is a question of the future. After all, scientific exploration is at best only 500 years old. You guys expecting miracles in such a short timespan? Mankind has been around for 100,000 years. History is 5500 years long. And yet in only 500 years were are supposed to have learnt everything?

The question is, after say 2000 years of solid research and making our measuring instruments better, are you saying that it would still be metaphysically impossible to reach those blueprints, or at least as good a version of them as might be usefull for anyone living in this universe.

Newton was smarter than any of us Polyposters. But he didn't anticipate electronics.

The next refinement of theory, infintessimal as it may appear to us today, may indeed have stunning practical ramifications for human beings.

You are the one who seems stuck in the present. Why would you suspect that NOW is the point in time where science has reached such a level of accuracy that makes refinement redundant?

That doesn't seem TRUE.

[loinburger]

At any rate, this strikes me as being more of an epistemological question than a metaphysical question. How much knowledge and/or how much of The Truth and/or whatever can man acquire through science and/or the scientific method and/or whatever? "A lot." But certainly not all of it. There comes a point where we can use science (and/or whatever) to conclude that something is true beyond a reasonable doubt, but there never comes a point that we can use science (and/or whatever) to conclude that something is true beyond any doubt. Hell, if you won't deign to consider the arguments of a scientist, then just ask our resident philosopher Agathon -- he has previously argued (I forget in which particular thread) that we cannot empirically disprove any particular theory, because it is possible to weave virtually any (conspiracy) theory into the fabric of our beliefs while still aligning most of our beliefs with the rest of society.

[Berzerker]

Btw, if Popper's right (and I don't think he is), creationnism is a science, because it can be refuted and has been refuted time and time again. At least some versions of creationnism have. For example, most biblical claims about Creation have been refuted. For example, God didn't create the universe 10 000 years ago.

The Bible doesn't say God created the universe, much less 10,000 years ago. This is the problem I have with creationists, they dont even understand Genesis and then people hear their absurdities and belive Genesis is gibberish.

Over the last few hundred years science has been catching up with religion wrt creation

[Bill3000]

If you guys seriously want to see real creationist "debates", head over the the CFC Off Topic, particularly reading posts by a poster named Zany.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Berzerker
The Bible doesn't say God created the universe, much less 10,000 years ago. This is the problem I have with creationists, they dont even understand Genesis and then people hear their absurdities and belive Genesis is gibberish.

This is just as a selective interpretation of Genesis as that of the fundies. After all, the first line of Genesis is that God "created heaven and earth." As far as the ancients knew, that WAS the universe. If you're implying that they didn't think God created everything, I'd love to see some support for that.

Over the last few hundred years science has been catching up with religion wrt creation

Yeah. How about that whole Pi = 3 thing, or bats are birds, or plants came before sunlight, or the sun stood still for a day, or...

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap

As for theories, I still haven't heard WHY all theories are simply models to be proven wrong eventually. There are various fields of science in which you don't keep measuring smaller and smaller intervals. So, why must we assume that say in 5000 years we won't have THE MODEL of how the human body works? What, all of a sudden the workings of our atoms will make some new fundamental change?

Absent truly ginormous increases in computation power THE MODEL of the human body would be useless. When dealing with a system that complex, you need a pretty high-level approximation to be able to do anything.

Any particular approximation may be enough for any particular application, but that doesn't mean it's The Truth.

[Boris Godunov]

Beyond that, it's not really the case that a model will "be proven wrong eventually." You can have a model that can't ever be proven wrong but may still not be correct. That just speaks to the limits of empiricism.

The more precise definition of "conditional truths" is that we accept from the start that there are limits to how much experimenting can be done and any "truths" learned from experimentation are constrained by such limits.

[Berzerker]

This is just as a selective interpretation of Genesis as that of the fundies.

Hardly. I use the actual definitions in Genesis for my interpretation, they dont.

After all, the first line of Genesis is that God "created heaven and earth." As far as the ancients knew, that WAS the universe.

And does Genesis define heaven and earth? Yes, and its clear by those definitions Genesis does not claim God created the universe 10,000 years ago.

If you're implying that they didn't think God created everything, I'd love to see some support for that.

Show me where in Genesis it says God created the water. The authors left that off their list of things "created" by God...

[Last Conformist]

Who gives a flying **** what it says in Genesis? And what, pray tell, does Genesis have to do with this thread?

[Impaler[WrG]]

A possible observation that coud support ID would be an aparent "cut and paste" between two totaly different and unrelated organisms.

By cut and paste I mean some large complex structure that would require considerable time to evolve and would in that evolution be subject to so many invintesmal variations such that it would be almost impossible for it to happen twice in adsactly the same way. We all know that many creatures have evolved wings and flight and Macro-Evolution says this should happen BUT that it must be done from scratch each time and thus every instance of its evolution will be different even as it achives the same goal. If such an identical structure were found in two very different animals whos youngest common ancestor could not have posesed that structure this would be strong evidence for ID.

And low and behond modern trans-genetic animals fit the bill, we can artificialy insert simple genes already, as we build up to more complex structures we will reach a threshold ware any reasonable independent observer could see that our animals were "designed" or atleast heavily modified. Ofcorse such such actions are more what one would expect from some kind of Alien planet farmer rather then an omnipotent God who would create things perfectly in a single instant of creation. That senario remains the untestable garbage that it always has been.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by GePap
And is science only about making theories? Or is the act of collecting those observations, the foundation of any theory, the most basic of scientific acts?

Science is more or less about making theories and verifying/falsifying them. When you have a theory you have the power of deduction. OTOH, when you only have a collection of observations all you can do is induction, which is far weaker and never certain.

[Urban Ranger]

What I am asking is whether there is a point at which one can proclaim that through empirical methods we can attain a similar certainty to our collective knowledge that the folks who hold revealed truth have with theirs. Is there a point at which the scientific community would be willing to stand and proclaim "we KNOW", as opposed to "look how good our current model is, isn't it neato!"

To add to what loinburger said, the so called "revealed truths" are bunk. When such "truths" can be verified, they have always turned out to be false, e.g. value of pi, various doomsday prohecies, etc. OTOH, when they can't be verified, on what basis can they be taken as true, given the verifiable ones turned out to be hogwash?